The association of miR-138 variants with the prognosis of cervical cancer

Abstract

Background MicroRNA-138 (miR-138) is shown to inhibit tumor growth and played a critical role in tumor pathogenesis, the present study aimed to investigate the prognistic value of miR-138 in cervical cancer. Methods Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assay was used to detect the expression of miR-138 in the tissues of cervical cancer and adjacent normal tissues. The association of miR-138 expression with clinical characteristic was analyzed via χ2 test. Then Kaplan-Meier analysis was performed to analyze the association of miR-138 expression with the overall survival of cervical cancer patients. The multivariate cox analysis was used to evaluate the prognostic value of miR-138. Results In the current study, we found the expression level of miR-138 was significantly downregulated in the most cervical cancer patients tissues compared with that in the adjacent normal tissues (P < 0.001). And its expression was closely affected by TNM stage (P = 0.043), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.011) and FIGO stage (P = 0.002). Kaplan-Meier analysis result showed that the decreased expression level of miR-138 expression was associated with poor overall survival of patients. The cox regression analysis result indicated that miR-138 expression was independently associated with the overall survival. Conclusions The expression of miR-138 is down-regulated and involved in the development of cervical cancer. Moreover, it may serve as a prognostic marker for patients with cervical cancer.