Overexpression of microRNA-183 in human colorectal cancer and its clinical significance

Abstract

Aim: MicroRNA-183 (miR-183) has been shown to play a potential oncogenic role in colon cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the expression of miR-183 in colorectal cancer (CRC) and its potential relevance to clinicopathological characteristics and patient survival.

Materials and methods: Surgical specimens of cancer tissue and adjacent normal mucosa were obtained from 94 patients with CRC. The relative expression levels of miR-183 in the cancer and the normal adjacent mucosa were measured by quantitative real-time PCR. We analyzed their correlation with clinicopathological parameters and prognostic value.

Results: The relative expression levels of miR-183 were significantly higher in CRC tissues than in the normal adjacent mucosa (P<0.001), and a high expression of miR-183 correlated with advanced clinical stage (P=0.030), lymph node metastasis (P=0.012), and distant metastasis (P=0.049). Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with high miR-183 expression had a poor overall survival (P=0.002). Moreover, multivariate analysis showed that increased expression of miR-183 was an independent predictor of overall survival.

Conclusion: The increased expression of miR-183 is closely related to advanced clinical stage, lymph node and distant metastases, and poor prognosis of CRC, indicating that miR-183 may serve as a predictive biomarker for the prognosis or the aggressiveness of CRC.