Decreased expression of microRNA-126 is associated with poor prognosis in patients with cervical cancer

BACKGROUND: MicroRNA-126(miR-126) has been shown to be frequently down-regulated in a variety of malignancies and act as a potential tumor suppressor. However, its correlations with the clinicopathological characters of cervical cancer remain unclear. METHODS: TaqMan quantitative RT-PCR was used to determine the expression level of miR-126 in tissue samples. The associations of miR-126 expression with clinicopathologic variables were analyzed. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was performed to analyze the association of miR-126 expression with overall survival (OS) of patients. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed. RESULTS: miR-126 expression level in human cervical cancer tissues was significantly lower than that in adjacent nontumorous tissues (mean ± SD: 0.59 ± 0.44 vs. 1.00 ± 0.51, P < 0.0001). Decreased miR-126 expression in cervical cancer was found to be significantly associated with lymphatic invasion (P = 0.002), distant metastasis (P < 0.001), FIGO stage (P = 0.009), and histological grade (P = 0.005). Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that patients with lower levels of miR-126 had significantly poorer survival than those with higher expression of this miRNA in patients, with a 5-year OS of 45.7% and 70.9%, respectively (P = 0.002). Multivariate analysis revealed that miR-126 expression (HR = 3.97, 95% CI: 2.01-20.22; P = 0.003) was independently associated with the OS. CONCLUSION: Our data suggests the potential of miR-126 as a prognostic biomarker for cervical cancer. VIRTUAL SLIDES: The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/13000_2014_220