Clinical significance of miR-22 expression in patients with colorectal cancer

• DOI: 10.1007/s12032-012-0233-9
• Publication Date: 2012-04-10T13:05:28Z
• Authors: Guangjun Zhang; Shusen Xia; Hongpeng Tian; Zuoliang Liu; Tong Zhou
• Keywords: Male; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; Down-Regulation; Kaplan-Meier Estimate; Adenocarcinoma; Middle Aged; Prognosis; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; 3. Good health; MicroRNAs; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Biomarkers, Tumor; Humans; Female; Colorectal Neoplasms; Aged; Neoplasm Staging; Proportional Hazards Models

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding RNAs that have been shown to be aberrantly expressed in several tumor types. Of these miRNAs, miR-22 as tumor suppressor has been shown to play a crucial role in human carcinogenesis. However, its association with the clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer has yet to be addressed. In this study, we compared the expression of miR-22 between colorectal cancer tissues and the normal adjacent mucosa using a quantitative real-time RT-PCR. The association of miR-22 expression with clinicopathological characters was analyzed by appropriate statistical analysis. Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to investigate the associations of miR-22 expression with survival of patients. Results showed that the relative expression levels of miR-22 were significantly lower in colorectal cancer tissues than those in the normal adjacent mucosa, and low expression of miR-22 correlated with liver metastasis. Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with reduced miR-22 had a poor overall survival. Moreover, the multivariate analysis showed that reduced expression of miR-22 was an independent predictor of overall survival. Our data indicate the potential of miR-22 as a novel prognostic biomarker for CRC.