Expression and significance of microRNA-183 in hepatocellular carcinoma

In our previous study, we found that some miRNAs were deregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), including miR-183. However, the expression of miR-183 in the progression of benign liver diseases to HCC and its correlation with clinicopathologic factors remain undefined.

MiR-183 expression was measured in normal controls (NC) (n = 21), chronic viral hepatitis B or C (CH) tissues (n = 10), liver cirrhosis (LC) tissues (n = 18), HCC tissues (n = 92), and adjacent nontumor tissues (NT) (n = 92) by quantitative real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR).

The expression levels of miR-183 were significantly higher in HCC than in NT, LC, CH, and NL (P = 0.001, P < 0.001, P = 0.011, P < 0.001, resp.). The upregulated miR-183 in HCC was correlated with TNM stage (P = 0.042) and cirrhosis (P = 0.025). The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that miR-183 expression was not associated with the survival of HCC patients. However, miR-183 yielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.808 with 59.8% sensitivity and 91.8% specificity in discriminating HCC from benign liver diseases (CH and LC) or NC.

The upregulated miR-183 may associate with onset and progression of HCC, but not with the patient survival. A further research is needed to determine the potential of miR-183 as biomarker for HCC.