The Expression And Clinical Significance Of MicroRNA-21 In Serum And Tissue Of Gastric Cancer

Objective: To detect the abundance of microRNA-21 (miR-21) in gastric cancer tissues (GCTs) and normal adjacent tumor tissues (NATs), and that in the serum of patients with gastric cancer (GC) and with begign disease; whose relevance to clinicopathological characteristics was further investigated, in order to observe the clinical significance of miR-21 as a serum marker for cancer detection.Methods: Taqman stem-loop real-time qRT-PCR method was used to assess the abundance of miR-21 in the GCTs (9 resectable cases of GCTs and NATs) and that in the serum (including 14 GCs and 5 gastric begign diseases); The pathologic and clinical data of the patients with gastric cancer were also collected. The relationship of the miR-21 expression in gastric cancer issues and the serum was analyzed, and the relationship of the miR-21 expression in serum and clinical indexes was also analyzed.Results:(1) The expression level of miR-21 was significantly higher in the GCTs than that in the paired NATs(P<0.05).(2) MiR-21 was overexpressed in the serum of gastric cancer compaired with that in the gastric begign diseases(P<0.05).(3) The expression level of miR-21 in the serum was positively correlated to that in the GCTs (rs=0.7,P=0.0358).(4) No significant difference of miR-21 level was observed between different clinical stages (stage I~II and stages III~IV)(P=0.1432), different lymph node metastasis stages(N0-N1 and N2-N3) or different tumor stage(T1-T2 and T3-T4) (P>0.05, respectively). Conclusion: There was a positive correlation between the levels of miR-21 in serum and tissues of gastric cancer. The serum levels of miR-21 in GCTs were overexpressed than that in NATs. The result suggested that miR-21 was a promising serum markers for GC.