miR-145 expression level in tissue predicts prognosis of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

BACKGROUND

MicroRNA-145 (miR-145) is commonly down-regulated and has been identified as a tumor-suppressive miRNA in multiple types of cancers, as well as in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). In the present study, the clinical significance and prognostic value were investigated in ESCC.

METHODS

A total of 126 patients with ESCC who underwent surgery were included in the present study. miR-145 expression was determined using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction assay (qRT-PCR) and was further correlated with patients' clinicopathological parameters. Overall survival was estimated by using Kaplan-Meier method, and univariate analysis was conducted by log-rank test. The Cox proportional hazards model was used in the multivariate analysis.

RESULTS

miR-145 expression levels in ESCC tissues were significantly decreased compared with the adjacent normal zones (P < 0.001). We observed that the expression level of miR-145 was positively correlated with the tumor differentiation (P = 0.015), lymph node status (P = 0.007), distant metastasis (P = 0.008), and TNM stage (P = 0.033). ESCC patients with low miR-145 expression level had shorter overall survival than those with high miR-145 expression level (log-rank test, P = 0.032). Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that miR-145 expression level was independent factor in predicting the overall survival of ESCC patients (HR = 1.993, 95% CI: 1.277-8.283, P = 0.023).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicated that miR-145 expression may be a useful prognostic marker that could be used for predicting overall survival of patients with ESCC.