Diagnostic Value of MicroRNA 21 in Endometrial Cancer and Benign Lesions and its Differential Expression with Clinicopathological Parameters

Endometrial cancer is one of the most common malignancies among women worldwide. Although this cancer is often diagnosed at early stages, the need for biomarkers of diagnosis remains a necessity to overcome conventional invasive procedures of diagnosis.

In our study, we aim to investigate the diagnostic value of microRNA-21 in endometrial cancer and its relation to clinicopathological features.

We used RT-qPCR to measure the expression of microRNA-21 in 71 tumor tissues, 53 adjacent tissues, and 54 benign lesions.

Our results show that microRNA-21 is a potential biomarker for endometrial cancer with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.925 (95% CI = 0.863 - 0.964, P<0.0001). The sensitivity was 84.51% (95% CI = 74.0 - 92.0) and specificity was 86.79% (95% CI = 74.7 - 94.5). For discrimination between benign lesions and controls the AUC was 0,881 with a sensitivity of 100% (95% CI = 93.4 - 100.0) and specificity of 66.04% (95% CI = 51.7 - 78.5), and for discriminating benign lesions from tumors the AUC was 0,750 with a sensitivity of 54.93% (95% CI = 42.7 - 66.8) and specificity of 90.74% (95% CI = 79.7 - 96.9). We also found that tumors with elevated microRNA-21 expression are of advanced FIGO stage, high histological grades, and have cervical invasion, myometrial invasion and distant metastasis.

Our findings support the important role of miR-21 as a biomarker to diagnose endometrial cancer. Further studies on minimally invasive/noninvasive samples such as serum, blood, and urine are necessary to provide a better alternative to current diagnosis methods.