Research on the serum level of microRNA-224 in hepatocellular carcinoma patients and its clinical diagnostic significance / 中国肿瘤临床

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the serum level of miR-224 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients and its clinical diag-nostic significance. Methods:The serum level of miR-224 was detected by real-time quantitative PCR. This study included 42 cases of patients with HCC, 36 patients with liver cirrhosis (LC), 55 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), and 40 healthy persons (NC). The relative expressions of miR-224 were calculated. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were analyzed to determine the sensitivity and specificity of miR-224 expression levels in HCC diagnosis. Results:Result shows that the relative miR-224 expression was higher in the serum of HCC patients than that in the CHB, LC, and NC groups. The difference was statistically significant (P0.05). ROC analysis shows that the best critical value of the relative expression levels of miR-224 was 3.47, with sensi-tivity of 82.2%, specificity of 92.8%, and area under the curve of 0.935. Conclusion:The serum level of miR-224 in HCC patients has high specificity, and miR-224 has great potential to become a new serological marker for the diagnosis of HCC.