Serum miR-34a is a potential diagnostic and prognostic marker for osteosarcoma

MicroRNA-34a (miR-34a) has been shown to be a potential diagnostic and prognostic marker for several cancers. In addition, miR-34a has been reported to suppress osteosarcoma cell proliferation in vitro. However, the clinical value of miR-34a is still unknown. In the present study, we evaluated serum miR-34a level in osteosarcoma patients to explore its diagnostic and prognostic value for this particular malignancy.

Serum from 120 patients with primary osteosarcoma, and 87 sex- and age-matched healthy individuals were obtained. Serum miR-34a level was measured with by a real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction assay (qRT-PCR) and correlation with clinicopathological characteristics was further analyzed using t test. Receiver operating curves (ROC), Kaplan-Meier curves, and log-rank analyses as well as Cox proportional hazard models were used to evaluate diagnostic and prognostic significance.

The serum miR-34a levels was significantly decreased in the serum of osteosarcoma patients compared to healthy controls (P < 0.001). Low miR-34a had significant association with clinical stage (P = 0.006), distant metastasis (P = 0.002), tumor grade (P = 0.038) and response to chemotherapy (P = 0.017). The Kaplan-Meier curve showed that patients with high miR-34a level survived significantly longer than patients with low miR-34a levels (P = 0.036). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that miR-34a level (P = 0.001) was an independent prognostic biomarker for overall survival. To distinguish osteosarcoma patients from healthy controls, ROC/AUC analysis indicated an AUC of 0.83 (sensitivity 0.68; specificity 0.92).

Decreased miR-34a might be related to the metastasis of osteosarcoma and might be a novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in osteosarcoma.