Poor prognosis of breast cancer patients with high expression of microRNA-23a / 肿瘤

ABSTRACT

Objective: To investigate the expression of microRNA-23a (miR-23a) in breast cancer tissues and the relationship between miR-23a expression and prognosis of patients with breast cancer. Methods: The expressions of miR-23a in 120 breast cancer tissue samples and adjacent para-cancerous tissue samples were detected by fluorescence in situ hybridization and real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR, respectively. The relationships between the expression of miR-23a and the clinicopathologic features and prognosis of patients with breast cancer were analyzed. Results: The results of fluorescence in situ hybridization and real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR showed that the expression level of miR-23a in breast cancer tissues was higher than that in adjacent para-cancerous tissues (both P < 0.01). Of 120 breast cancer tissue samples, 72 (60.00%) had high expression of miR-23a. The high expression of miR-23a was significantly associated with gynecological disease history (P = 0.01), tumor size (P = 0.02), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.01), TNM stage (P = 0.01) and tumor differentiation (P = 0.04). The median survival time of breast cancer patients with high expression of miR-23a was shorter than that of the patients with low expression of miR-23a (P = 0.003). Lymph node metastasis, advanced TNM stage, poor tumor differentiation and high expression of miR-23a were independent negative prognostic factors for patients with breast cancer (all P < 0.05).Conclusion: The miR-23a is highly expressed in breast cancer. The high expression of miR-23a is an independent factor indicating poor prognosis of patients with breast cancer.