Value of serum miR-486-5p combined with carbohydrate antigen 19-9 in predicting resectable or borderline resectable pancreatic cancer / 临床肝胆病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the expression level of serum miR-486-5p in patients with pancreatic cancer and the value of serum miR-486-5p combined with carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) in predicting the resectability of pancreatic cancer. Methods A total of 60 patients who were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in Qingdao Municipal Hospital from September 2018 to December 2020 were enrolled, among whom 32 patients had resectable or borderline resectable pancreatic cancer (operable group) and 28 had unresectable pancreatic cancer (non-operable group), and a benign pancreatic disease group with 30 patients and a healthy control group with 44 individuals were also established. Quantitative real-time PCR was used to measure the serum level of miR-486-5p in each group, and the relative expression level of miR-486-5p was calculated to analyze its association with the clinical features of pancreatic cancer, including age, sex, tumor location, tumor size, TNM stage, lymphatic metastasis, and distant metastasis. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for comparison of non-normally distributed continuous variables between two groups, and the chi-square test was used for comparison of categorical variables. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was plotted, and a binary logistic regression analysis was used to calculate the combined predictive value and then investigate the value of serum miR-486-5p combined with CA19-9 in predicting the resectability of pancreatic cancer. Results The relative expression level of serum miR-486-5p in the operable group [2.16 (1.38~3.30)] and the non-operable group [4.65 (2.80~9.90)] was significantly higher than that in the benign pancreatic disease group [1.01 (0.52~1.53)] and the healthy control group [0.99 (0.24~1.01)] (all P < 0.001). There were significant differences in the number of patients with low or high expression of miR-486-5p between the patients with different TNM stages, presence or absence of lymphatic metastasis, and presence or absence of distant metastasis ( χ 2 =13.765, 5.157, and 6.638, all P < 0.05). Compared with CA19-9 alone, miR-486-5p+CA19-9 had a significantly better value in distinguishing the operable group from the benign pancreatic disease group (area under the ROC curve [AUC]=0.87, 95% confidence interval [ CI ] 0.760-0.942; with a sensitivity of 81.3% and a specificity of 83.3%), distinguishing the operable group from the healthy control group (AUC=0.92, 95% CI 0.836-0.970; with a sensitivity of 90.6% and a specificity of 86.4%), and distinguishing the operable group from the non-operable group (AUC=0.94, 95% CI 0.884-0.998; with a sensitivity of 85.7% and a specificity of 93.7%) ( Z =2.841, 2.510, and 2.387, all P < 0.05), and the optimal cut-off values were 3.12, 3.21, and 6.63, respectively. Conclusion MiR-486-5p can be used as a serum biomarker for the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and miR-486-5p combined with CA19-9 has a better clinical value than CA19-9 alone in predicting the resectability of pancreatic cancer in the patients with benign pancreatic diseases and the healthy population.