Overexpression of long-noncoding RNA ZFAS1 decreases survival in human NSCLC patients

The purpose of the current study was to characterize the expression of long-noncoding-RNA ZFAS1 (ZFAS1) and assess the clinical significance of ZFAS1 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

A total of 173 patients with NSCLC were addressed in the present retrospective study. Expression levels of ZFAS1 were detected by quantitative real-time PCR. We further analyzed the correlation between ZFAS1 and clinicopathologic features of NSCLC with X2-test. Survival rate was determined with Kaplan-Meier and statistically analyzed with the log-rank method between groups. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to analyze the prognostic significance of ZFAS1 expression.

ZFAS1 was upregulated in NSCLC tissues (p < 0.01) and higher expression levels of ZFAS1 were found in more advanced tumor tissues (All p < 0.05). ZFAS1 expression levels were significantly associated with tumor differentiation grade (p = 0.028), lymph node metastasis (p = 0.001) and TMN stage (p = 0.001). Furthermore, we found that patients with higher ZFAS1 expression level are associated with a poorer overall survival. Univariate and multivariate analyses indicated that high ZFAS1 expression was an independent prognostic factor for poor survival of NSCLC patients.

Our results illustrated the potential role of ZFAS1 as a prognostic marker for NSCLC patients.