Upregulation of microRNA-106b is associated with poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma

作者:Li Bin Kui; Huang Pin Zhu; Qiu Ji Liang; Liao Ya Di; Hong Jian; Yuan Yun Fei*
来源:Diagnostic Pathology, 2014, 9: 226.
DOI:10.1186/s13000-014-0226-4

摘要

Background: MicroRNA-106b (miR-106b) is a member of the miR-106b similar to 25 cluster. It has been reported that miR-106b acts as an oncogene and is upregulated in many human cancers. However, the prognostic value of miR-106b in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical significance of miR-106b expression in HCC.
Methods: We determined the expression level of miR-106b in 104 cases of paired HCC and adjacent non-tumor tissues by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). The correlation between miR-106b expression and prognosis of HCC was studied by univariate and multivariate analysis. Multivariate analysis of the prognostic factors was performed with Cox proportional hazards model.
Results: MiR-106b expression was significantly upregulated in as high as 76.0% of HCC tissues, compared with their non-tumor counterparts (P < 0.001). High miR-106b expression was significantly associated with large tumor size (P = 0.019) and vascular invasion (P = 0.016). Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that patients with high miR-106b expression had a worse overall survival than patients with low miR-106b expression (log-rank P = 0.004). The multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that miR-106b expression was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (HR, 2.002; 95% CI, 1.130-6.977; P = 0.027).
Conclusion: Our data indicated that miR-106b expression was significantly upregulated in HCC and could serve as a potential unfavorable prognostic biomarker.