Non‑invasive prostate cancer detection by measuring expression level of miR-21 and miR-214 in urine

Abstract

Background: Prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer among men worldwide. Diagnosis in this cancer is primarily done using aggressive methods, such as biopsy. Laboratory methods, such as measurement of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in the blood, do not have high sensitivity and specificity. MicroRNAs, a group of diagnostic biomarkers, can be used to diagnose diseases such as cancer. MicroRNA is small, non-coding, single-stranded RNA with a length of 21-23 nucleotides. The present study was undertaken to investigate changes in the expression level of miR-21 and miR-214 in the urine to detect prostate cancer. Methods: Testing was done on 70 urine samples from prostate cancer patients (32 metastatic and 38 non-metastatic) and 30 from healthy individuals with negative biopsy reports as the control group. Changes in the expression level of miR-21 and miR-214 in the urine were investigated by using qRT-PCR. Results: miR-21 showed a significant increase in expression (p = 0.003) and miR-214 showed a significant decrease in expression (p = 0.000) over the results of the control group. The specificity, sensitivity and AUC for combined panels of both microRNAs were 100%, 72.14% and 0.721 and for PSA were 63.33%, 61.43% and 0.620, respectively. Conclusions: The results show that miR-21 and miR-214 show significant changes in expression in patients with prostate cancer compared to the control group. A combined panel of miR-21 and miR-214 can be used as a non-invasive method for detecting prostate cancer with higher sensitivity and specificity than the PSA test.