Affiliations: [a] Department of Oncology, Urumqi General Hospital of Lanzhou Military Command of PLA, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China | [b] Department of Surgery, The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China | [c] Department of Internal Medicine, Affiliated Tumor Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Jian-Guo Huang, Department of Oncology, Urumqi General Hospital of Lanzhou Military Command of PLA, Urumqi 830000, Xinjiang, China. Tel.: +86 0991 4842256; E-mail:[email protected]
Note: [1] Fan Chena, Xin-Feng Lia and Dong-Sheng Fu are co-first author.
Abstract: miRNA-221 is one of the over 700 kinds of currently known microRNAs (miRNAs)
and is up-regulated in multiple tumors, suggesting that it may be a
potential carcinogenic miRNA. Few studies have explored the relationship
between miRNA-221 and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We performed real-time
quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to detect miRNA-221 expression
in HCC and para-carcinoma tissues and to explore the relationship between
abnormal expression of miRNA-221 and clinicopathological features of HCC
patients. miRNA-221 expression was significantly higher in HCC tissues than
in adjacent tissues (P < 0.001). We analyzed the relationship between
miRNA-221 expression level and clinicopathological characteristics of HCC
patients. Our results suggested that miRNA-221 expression level was closely
related to tumor stage (P = 0.012), number of tumor nodes (P = 0.018), and
microvascular invasion (P = 0.010) in HCC patients. The results of survival
analysis suggested that HCC patients with up-regulated miRNA-221 expression
had a shorter survival time. The high miRNA-221 expression indicates the
poor prognosis of HCC patients; thus, miRNA-221 can be regarded an important
molecular marker for HCC prognosis.
