Serum miRNAs, a potential prognosis marker of loco-regionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients treated with CCRT

BACKGROUND: Serum miRNA was once found as potential disease survival index,thus we investigated the role of miRNA in predicting prognosis in loco-regionally advanced NPC patients treated with CCRT. METHODS: This study included two phases: (i) We enrolled 3 NPC patients with recurrence or distant metastasis (experimental group, EG) and 3 NPC patients in clinical remission (control group, CG),who were treated with CCRT within 5 years. The paired serum was collected before and after treatment and biomarkers were discovered by LNA-TaqMan Human MicroRNA Arrays. (ii) we used the bioinformatic analysis, marker selection and an independent validation by qRT-PCR to analyse the serums of 29 NPC patients with recurrent disease or distant metastasis and 19 NPC patients in clinical remission treated with CCRT. Using the Kaplan-Meier method, log-rank test and Cox regression model to estimate the accuracy of the miRNAs to predict PFS and OS, and identified factors significantly associated with prognosis, respectively. RESULTS: Using fold change≥2.0 or ≤ 0.5 and p ≤ 0.05 as cutoff levels, we identified 1 up-regulated and 6 down-regulated miRNAs, 1 up-regulated and 9 down-regulated miRNAs in EG versus CG before and after CCRT, respectively. After these down-regulated miRNAs were dealed with bioinformatics analysis and normalization, only 5 different miRNAs were significantly reduced, which there were no significant difference in the expression of miRNA-26b, miRNA-29a and miRNA-125b before CCRT, and the expression of miRNA-143 and miRNA-29b after CCRT in the serum samples of 48 NPC patients. Based on this, we calculated a risk score with the expression of miRNA-26b、miRNA-29a、miRNA-125b、miRNA-29b、miRNA-143 and then classified patients as high or low risk group. Cox regression model suggested that combining miRNA-29a and miRNA-125b before CCRT with miRNA-26b after CCRT was independent prognostic factors for PFS (HR = 3.149, 95%CI:1.018–9.115, p = 0.034), whereas combining the former two is independent for OS (HR = 5.146, 95%CI:1.674–15.817, p = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS: For loco-regionally advanced NPC patients treated with CCRT, especially high-risk patients- serum miRNAs, such as miRNA-29a, miRNA-125b and miRNA-26b etc., play an important role in predicting prognosis factors of PFS and OS, which will contribute to the strategic direction for future research.