ABSTRACT
Objective: To investigate the potential role of plasmatic microRNA-27b-3p (miR-27b-3p) as a biomarker in early diagnosis of gastric cancer (GC). Methods: The expressions of miR-27b-3p in plasma from 46 GC patients and 40 age- and gender-matched healthy controls were detected by real-time fluorescent quantitative-PCR (RFQ-PCR). The expression of miR-27b-3p in peripheral blood cells from 12 GC patients and 12 healthy controls were also detected by RFQ-PCR. The association of plasmatic miR-27b-3p level with the clinicopathological features of GC was statistically analyzed. The sensitivity and specificity of miR-27b-3p for diagnosis of GC were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and area under the curve (AUC). Results: The level of plasmatic miR-27b-3p in GC patients was significantly lower than that in the healthy controls (P 0.05). The downregulation of plasmatic miR-27b-3p level was correlated to the differentiation of GC (P 0.05). The ROC curve analysis showed that AUC value was 0.724, and the sensitivity and specificity of plasmatic miR-27b-3p used for differential diagnosis of GC were 60.0% and 76.1%, respectively. Conclusion: Downregulation of plasmatic miR-27b-3p level may indicate the occurrence of GC. MiR-27b-3p may be a potential biomarker for early diagnosis of GC.