OBJECTIVES

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) is a highly malignant cancer. More than 70% of patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage. The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of plasma miR-21, miR-122, and CA19-9, hoping to establish a novel model to improve the accuracy for diagnosing iCCA.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Plasma miR-21 and miR-122 were detected in 359 iCCA patients and 642 controls (healthy, benign liver lesions, other malignant liver tumors). All 1001 samples were allocated to training cohort ( = 668) and validation cohort ( = 333) in a chronological order. A logistic regression model was applied to combine these markers. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used as an accuracy index to evaluate the diagnostic performance.

RESULTS

Plasma miR-21 and miR-122 were significantly higher in iCCA patients than those in controls. Higher plasma miR-21 level was significantly correlated with larger tumor size ( = 0.030). A three-marker model was constructed by using miR-21, miR-122 and CA19-9, which showed an AUC of 0.853 (95% CI: 0.824-0.879; sensitivity: 73.0%, specificity: 87.4%) to differentiate iCCA from controls. These results were subsequently confirmed in the validation cohort with an AUC of 0.866 (0.825-0.901). The results were similar for diagnosing early (stages 0-I) iCCA patients (AUC: 0.848) and CA19-9 iCCA patients (AUC: 0.795).

CONCLUSIONS

We established a novel three-marker model with a high accuracy based on a large number of participants to differentiate iCCA from controls. This model showed a great clinical value especially for the diagnosis of early iCCA and CA19-9 iCCA.