Expression of miR-221 and miR-489 in breast cancer patients and their relationship with prognosis

Expression of miR-221 and miR-489 in breast cancer patients and their prognostic value were investigated. Sixty-two breast cancer patients admitted to the First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine for tumor surgery, from July 2014 to January 2016, were selected as the research group (RG), and 27 female adults who underwent physical examination during the same period were selected as the control group (CG). miR-221 and miR-489 expression levels in the blood samples of the breast cancer patients and the healthy female adults were detected by fluorescence reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR), and the relationship of the expression levels of miR-221 and miR-489 with the disease prognosis was analyzed. The expression levels of miR-221 and miR-489 in the blood samples of breast cancer patients were 7.13±1.19 and 0.88±0.09, respectively, and those in the blood samples of healthy individuals were 5.82±0.84 and 1.01±0.12, respectively. The expression level of miR-221 in the RG was significantly higher than that in the CG (P<0.01), while the expression level of miR-489 in the RG was significantly lower than that in the CG (P<0.01). The area under the curve (AUC) of miR-221 was 0.769, and the AUC of miR-489 was 0.805. When AUC was equal to 0.88, the combined detection of the two had higher sensitivity and specificity than the single detection. The 3-year survival rates of miR-221 low-expression group and miR-489 high-expression group were significantly higher than those of the miR-221 high-expression group and miR-489 low-expression group (P<0.05). miR-221 expression was upregulated and miR-489 expression was downregulated in blood samples of breast cancer patients, which had a certain impact on the patients survival. In the future, miR-221 can be used as an effective indicator for diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of breast cancer.