Department of Clinical Genetics, Odense University Hospital, Sdr. Boulevard 29, 5000, Odense C, Denmark,
Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2013 Dec;142(3):529-36. doi: 10.1007/s10549-013-2776-7. Epub 2013 Nov 21.
Expression of HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA (HOTAIR)--a long non-coding RNA--has been examined in a variety of human cancers, and overexpression of HOTAIR is correlated with poor survival among breast, colon, and liver cancer patients. In this retrospective study, we examine HOTAIR expression in 164 primary breast tumors, from patients who do not receive adjuvant treatment, in a design that is paired with respect to the traditional prognostic markers. We show that HOTAIR expression differs between patients with or without a metastatic endpoint, respectively. Survival analysis shows that high HOTAIR expression in primary tumors is significantly associated with worse prognosis independent of prognostic markers (P = 0.012, hazard ratio (HR) 1.747). This association is even stronger when looking only at estrogen receptor (ER)-positive tumor samples (P = 0.0086, HR 1.985). In ER-negative tumor samples, we are not able to detect a prognostic value of HOTAIR expression, probably due to the limited sample size. These results are successfully validated in an independent dataset with similar associations (P = 0.018, HR 1.825). In conclusion, our findings suggest that HOTAIR expression may serve as an independent biomarker for the prediction of the risk of metastasis in ER-positive breast cancer patients.
HOX 转录反义基因间 RNA（HOTAIR）的表达已在多种人类癌症中进行了研究，并且 HOTAIR 的过表达与乳腺癌、结肠癌和肝癌患者的不良预后相关。在这项回顾性研究中，我们检查了 164 例未接受辅助治疗的原发性乳腺癌肿瘤中的 HOTAIR 表达，设计上与传统的预后标志物配对。我们表明，HOTAIR 表达在有或没有转移终点的患者之间存在差异。生存分析表明，原发性肿瘤中高 HOTAIR 表达与预后不良显著相关，独立于预后标志物（P = 0.012，风险比（HR）为 1.747）。当仅观察雌激素受体（ER）阳性肿瘤样本时，这种相关性更强（P = 0.0086，HR 为 1.985）。在 ER 阴性肿瘤样本中，我们无法检测到 HOTAIR 表达的预后价值，可能是由于样本量有限。这些结果在具有类似关联的独立数据集（P = 0.018，HR 为 1.825）中得到了成功验证。总之，我们的研究结果表明，HOTAIR 表达可能是 ER 阳性乳腺癌患者转移风险预测的独立生物标志物。
