MicroRNA-449a Plays an Indicative Role in Diagnosing Lung Cancer

Abstract

Background: Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer death among all the malignancies worldwide. Evidences suggest that the incidence and mortality of lung cancer has been on the rise. MicroRNA-449a (miR-449a) as one important member of microRNAs, has been demonstrated acting as a tumor suppressor in lung cancer. In this study, we sought to assess the relationship between miR-449a expression level and diagnostic value of lung cancer.Methods: In this present research, quantitative Real-Time PCR was applied to detect the miR-449a expression in 116 lung cancer patients and 41 healthy volunteers. The diagnostic value of miR-449a in lung cancer patients was determined by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.Results: MiR-449a was significantly down-regulated in lung cancer patients compared with healthy control (P<0.05). In addition, miR-449a expression was associated with sex (P=0.004), tumor size (P=0.000), TNM stage (P=0.006) and metastasis (P=0.036). However, there was no correlation with age, smoking history and histological type of lung cancer patients (all P＞0.05). In the ROC analysis, the results showed that the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.902 with the sensitivity of 94.8% and specificity of 78.0%, and the optimum cutoff value was 2.255.Conclusion: MiR-449a expression was down-regulated in lung cancer patients, and it could be an efficient diagnostic biomarker in lung cancer patients.