Plasma miR-454-3p as a potential prognostic indicator in human glioma

microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs, approximately 21-25 nucleotides in length. Recently, some researchers have demonstrated that plasma miRNAs are sensitive and specific biomarkers of various cancers. Using quantitative real-time PCR, the expression levels of miR-454-3p were compared between pre-operative plasmas from 70 glioma patients and 70 healthy controls, and between these pre-operative and post-operative plasmas. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to evaluate the association of miR-454-3p with prognosis of glioma patients. The expression levels of miR-454-3p in plasma in glioma patients were significantly higher than that from healthy controls. The expression levels of miR-454-3p were higher in high grade gliomas than in low grade gliomas. The AUC of the expression of miR-454-3p in plasma for glioma diagnosis was 0.9063. The expression levels of miR-454-3p in the post-operative plasmas were significantly downregulated when compared to the pre-operative plasmas. Moreover, the prognosis of glioma with high miR-454-3p expression was significantly worse compared with that of glioma with low miR-454-3p expression. Our results suggested that plasma miR-454-3p could be a novel potential diagnostic biomarker for glioma.