Circulating lncRNA H19 in plasma as a novel biomarker for breast cancer

Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) H19 has been well studied playing an important role in breast cancer (BC) progress and the expression of H19 may service as a diagnostic target for BC. However, it is unclear if circulating lncRNA H19 could as a potential biomarker for BC diagnosis and monitor.

The objective of our study was to determine whether plasma lncRNA H19 could be used as biomarkers for the screening and early diagnosis of breast cancer.

In this study, we carried out a quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) method to examine the expression levels of lncRNA H19 in 24 pairs of BC tissues and 20 pairs of BC plasma. The differentially expressed of plasma H19 was further validated in another 102 BC patients and 96 healthy controls. The potential correlations between plasma H19 levels and clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was performed to evaluate the diagnostic values of plasma H19 between 30 early stage BC patients and 30 healthy controls. 24 paired pre- and postoperative plasma samples were detected to assess the tumor monitoring values.

The results revealed that the expression of H19 was significantly increased in BC tissues and plasma compared with healthy controls (P< 0.05), and plasma H19 levels were significantly correlated with estrogen receptor (ER) (P= 0.008), progesterone receptor (PR) (P= 0.025), c-erbB-2 (P= 0.043) and lymph node metastasis (P= 0.006). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of plasma H19 was 0.81(sensitivity, 56.7%; specificity, 86.7%; P< 0.0001), which was higher than the values of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carbohydrate antigen 153 (CA153). Furthermore, plasma H19 levels were significantly decreased in postoperative samples than preoperative samples (P= 0.0006).

Plasma H19 may serve as a potential biomarker for BC early screening and prognosis monitor.