Dysregulation of miRNA-21 and their potential as biomarkers for the diagnosis of cervical cancer.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to characterize the miR-21 and evaluated its clinical significance.

METHODS

Total RNA was extracted from 30 pairs of fresh specimens of cervical cancer and normal tissues. The expression levels of the miR-21-3p and miR-21-5p were detected by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, with U6 as the internal reference gene. We compared the expression of miR-21-3p and miR-21-5p between study group and control groups, the association between miRNA expression level and clinicopathological factors was investigated.

RESULTS

The expression of miR-21-3p and miR-21-5p in HPV positive cervical cancer samples was significantly upregulated compared to that in the paired normal samples (P < 0.05); A multivariate analysis demonstrated that the expression of miR-21 was associated with clinicopathological parameters, including depth of invasion and lymph node metastasis.

CONCLUSIONS

MiR-21 upregulation is associated with aggressive progression and poor prognosis in cervical cancer, which suggests that miR-21 might be identified as an independent marker for predicting the clinical outcome of cervical cancer patients.