Assessment of Serum MicroRNA-21 Gene Expression for Diagnosis and Prognosis of Colorectal Cancer

• DOI: 10.1007/s12029-019-00306-w
• Publication Date: 2019-09-03T05:30:41Z
• Authors: Amal F. Ghareib; Randa H. Mohamed; Ahmed R. Abd el-F...; Sara F. Saadawy
• Keywords: Male; Liver Neoplasms; Middle Aged; Prognosis; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; Risk Assessment; 3. Good health; Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; MicroRNAs; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; ROC Curve; Case-Control Studies; Biomarkers, Tumor; Humans; Female; Neoplasm Invasiveness; Neoplasm Recurrence, Local; Colorectal Neoplasms; Early Detection of Cancer; Neoplasm Staging

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that are involved in carcinogenesis through posttranscriptional gene regulatory activity. The current study aimed to evaluate serum miR-21 expression levels as potential biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients.Quantitative real-time RT-PCR was applied to determine the relative expression level of miR-21 in serum. At the same time, the sensitivity and specificity of this marker were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.miR-21 expression levels of serum were 3.4 and 1.25 in patient and control, respectively (p < 0.05). The sensitivity and specificity of miR-21 were found to be 95.8% and 91.7%, respectively. The high expression level of serum miR-21 were associated with higher local recurrence, TNM staging, PT staging, venous invasion, liver metastasis, and recurrence (p < 0.05).The results of this study indicated that miR-21 expression levels in serum can be considered as a novel non-invasive biomarker for early detection and prognosis of CRC patients.