Clinical Significance of Circulatory miRNA-21 as an Efficient Non-Invasive Biomarker for the Screening of Lung Cancer Patients

Abstract

Dysregulation in the miRNA-21 expression has been previously observed in a number of malignancies and not only<br />in the tumor cell itself but also in the body fluids of the cancer patients. The present study aimed to find out the clinical<br />significance of cell-free circulating miRNA-21 as an efficient non-invasive biomarker for the screening of lung cancer<br />patients. The present case-control study included plasma samples from 80 lung cancer patients and 80 healthy controls.<br />Magnetic bead technology was used for efficient miRNA isolation and advanced TaqMan miRNA assays were used<br />for the quantification of miRNA-21 level in the plasma of the lung cancer patients and healthy individuals.The overall<br />mean relative expression level of plasma miRNA-21 among lung cancer patients (2.32±1.7) was higher when compared<br />to healthy individuals (0.715 ± 0.48) and it showed a significant difference of pwas 0.8913 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.8394 to 0.9431, p< 0.0001] and the sensitivity and specificity were both<br />80.0% when the cut-off value was 1.207. In conclusion, plasma miRNA-21 can be efficiently extracted by the magnetic<br />bead technology and quantified by the advanced TaqMan miRNA assay. Plasma miRNA-21 showed a high ability to<br />distinguish between lung cancer patients and healthy individuals, therefore can be used as an efficient non-invasive<br />biomarker for the screening of Lung cancer patients.