BackgroundRecently, more and more studies investigated the value of microRNA (miRNA) as a diagnostic or prognostic biomarker in various cancers. MiR-21 was found dysregulated in almost all types of cancers. While the prognostic role of miR-21 in many cancers has been studied, the results were not consistent.MethodsWe performed a meta-analysis to investigate the correlation between miR-21 and survival of general cancers by calculating pooled hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).ResultsThe pooled results of 63 published studies showed that elevated miR-21 was a predictor for poor survival of general carcinomas, with pooled HR of 1.91 (95%CI: 1.66–2.19) for OS, 1.42 (95% CI: 1.16–1.74) for DFS and 2.2 (95% CI: 1.64–2.96) for RFS/CSS. MiR-21 was also a prognostic biomarker in the patients who received adjuvant therapy, with pooled HR of 2.4 (95%CI: 1.18–4.9) for OS.ConclusionsOur results showed that miR-21 could act as a significant biomarker in the prognosis of various cancers. Further studies are warranted before the application of the useful biomarker in the clinical.

Recently, lymphocyte to monocyte ratio (LMR) has been reported to be associated with clinical outcomes in some types of cancer but has not been explored in gastric cancer. In this study, we analyzed the association between LMR and clinical outcomes in stage II/III gastric cancer patients. Preoperative LMR calculated from peripheral lymphocyte and monocyte with corresponding clinical features from 426 stage II/III gastric cancer patients was noted. Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression model were applied for overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS). Related with smaller tumor size (p<0.001), increased LMR could predict better OS [hazard ratio (HR), 0.688; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.521-0.908, p=0.008] and was borderline significantly associated with better RFS (HR, 0.775; 95% CI, 0.592-1.01, p=0.06) in stage II/III gastric cancer patients through multivariable analysis. Subgroup analyses revealed that except stage III patients for RFS which yielded borderline significance (p=0.052), lower LMR was associated with poor clinical outcomes for patients regardless of different stages or whether the patients received adjuvant chemotherapy. The elevated preoperative LMR level was a significant favorable factor in the prognosis of stage II/III gastric cancer patients, especially for those with stage II. However, further validation of our findings is warranted.

Some reports have evaluated the prognostic relevance of microRNAs (miRNAs) in patients with pancreatic cancer (PC). However, most studies focused on limited miRNAs with small number of patients. The aim of the study is to identify a panel of miRNA signature that could predict prognosis in PC with the data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). A total of 167 PC patients with the corresponding clinical data were enrolled in our study. The miRNAs significantly associated with overall survival (OS) in PC patients were identified with Cox proportional regression model. A risk score formula was developed to evaluate the prognostic value of the miRNA signature in PC. Thirteen miRNAs were identified to be significantly related with OS in PC patients. Patients with high risk score suffered poor overall survival compared with patients who had low risk score. The multivariate Cox regression analyses showed that the miRNA signature could act as an independent prognostic indicator. In addition, the signature might serve as a predicator for treatment outcome. Our study identified a miRNA signature including 13 miRNAs which could serve as an independent marker in prognosis of PC.

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BackgroundBreast cancer patients with positive estrogen receptor (ER) have a better prognosis. However, no prognostic miRNA signature was reported in the ER-positive breast cancer. The aim of the study was to identify and assess the prognostic significance of a miRNA signature in ER-positive breast cancer.MethodsTwo cohorts from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset were used as training (n =596) and testing set (n =319). Differential expression profiling was identified in the training set. And the prognostic value of the miRNA signature was then assessed in the two cohorts.ResultsA total of 14 miRNAs were observed to be associated with the status of ER by significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) in the training set. Patients were characterized as high score or low score group according to the calculated risk scores from each miRNA. And patients in high score group had worse overall survival compared with those in low score group both in the training and testing set.ConclusionsOur study revealed a miRNA signature including 14 miRNAs associated with ER status which could act as a prognostic marker in ER-positive breast cancer.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13046-014-0094-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.