论文部分内容阅读
Objective: Early diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancer is critical for patient survival.The objective of this study is to identify a circulating miRNA as a potential biomarker for epithelial ovarian cancer.Methods: A total of 135 epithelial ovarian cancer patients and 54 benign ovarian tumor patients were recruited in this study.Using customized TaqMan low density miRNA arrays,we screened expression levels of 48 miRNAs in sera from 18 epithelial ovarian cancer patients and 16 benign ovarian tumor patients.Levels of one differentially expressed miRNA were then further examined in all serum samples using realtime PCF.Its expression was analyzed in relationship with clinicopathological factors and patient survivals.Results: Array screening data showed that expression levels of serum miRNA-20a,miRNA-125b,miRNA-126,miRNA-355 and let-7c were significantly changed between malignant and benign ovarian tumor patients.Subsequent realtime PCR results showed that serum miRNA-125b levels were significantly higher in epithelial ovarian cancer patients compared to benign controls.Moreover,serum miRNA-125b levels were significantly higher in ovarian cancer patients at early stages Ⅰ and Ⅱ,and in patients having no residual tumor after operation.Its levels were not associated with differentiation and histological types of ovarian cancer.Notably,the higher level of miR-125b was significantly correlated with longer progress free survival (PFS) (P=0.035),and marginally correlated with overall survival (OS) (P=0.069).Conclusion: miRNA-125b may play an important role in the pathogenesis and progression of epithelial ovarian cancer.Circulating miRNA-125b has the potential to become a novel biomarker for early diagnosis and prognosis prediction of epithelial ovarian cancer.