Clinical utility of circulating MicroRNA-21 in breast cancer

Background: Breast cancer remains the most frequent type of cancer in females worldwide, with nearly 1.7 million new cases diagnosed in 2012. In Egypt, breast cancer is the most common malignancy among females accounting for 18.3% of total cancer cases in Egypt. Unfortunately, the traditional imaging techniques as well as the currently accepted markers such as serum CEA and CA 15.3 cannot adequately identify early stage patients. MiRNAs are a class of endogenous non-coding RNAs tilde 22 nucleotides in length, which regulate gene expression primarily at the post-transcriptional level and thus are involved in many cellular processes, such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. One of which is miRNA-21 and its alterations have been shown to play critical roles in breast cancer

Materials and Methods: This is a pilot retrospective case-control study. We quantified serum microRNA-21 expression levels using qRT-PCR in 30 breast cancer patients and another 10 controls in comparison to CA 15-3 as a conventional marker of breast cancer used in clinical practice

Results: MiRNA-21 expression levels in early diagnosis of breast cancer patients with a superior both sensitivity and specificity of 100% specially in comparison with CA 15.3 that displayed 70% sensitivity and 60% specificity

Conclusion: MiRNA-21 levels are significantly higher in breast cancer patients compared to healthy subjects. Furthermore, we found that increased miRNA-21 expression levels correlated with progression of breast cancer stages

Do serum CA 19-9 and CA 125 levels predict the severity of HCV-related liver fibrosis?

To study the value of measurement of serum tumor markers CA 19-9 and CA 125 as predictors of severity of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Fifty patients with chronic hepatitis C were recruited from the Hepatology and Gastroenterology Department at Ain Shams University Hospital. They were 31 men and 19 women, with ages ranging from 18 to 50 years. Participants were subjected to full clinical examination, liver function tests, viral markers [hepatitis B surface antigen, hepatitis C virus antibody], a fetoprotein, autoimmune markers, assay of serum levels of CA 19-9 and CA 125, abdominal ultrasonography, and ultrasound-guided liver biopsy. Histopathological examination for staging of liver fibrosis was performed using the Ishak scoring system. There was a highly significant positive correlation between serum levels of CA 19-9 and CA 125 and the stage of liver fibrosis [P<0.01]. There was also a difference in the mean values of serum CA 19-9 among different stages of liver fibrosis. Similar differences were seen for CA 125. The best cut-off value for CA 19-9 in predicting severe liver fibrosis and cirrhosis [stages 5, 6] was found to be 33.87 U/ml with sensitivity of 93.8% and specificity of 88.2%, whereas the best cut-off value for CA 125 in predicting severe liver fibrosis and cirrhosis [stages 5, 6] was found to be 25 U/ml with sensitivity of 93.8% and specificity of 82.4%. Combined elevation of CA 19-9 and CA 125 above the cut-off value showed less sensitivity [87.5%] than that of each of CA 19-9 [93.8%] and CA 125 [93.8%], and a better specificity [88.24%] than that of CA 19-9 [88.2%] and CA 125 [82.4%]. Serum CA 19-9 and CA 125 may be used as noninvasive markers of severe hepatitis C virus-related liver fibrosis. This needs to be validated by more studies