Plasma miR-378a as a novel biomarker for the early detection of colon cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Prognosis and treatment outcomes of colon cancer (CC) patients are poor due to the limitations of the current early diagnostic techniques. Recently, innovations in liquid biopsy technology have inspired research into identifying early peripheral blood-based diagnostic markers for CC.

Objective: The objectives of the study are to evaluate the potential of plasma miR-378a as a diagnostic biomarker for early CC.

Methods: In this study, quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was used to measure plasma miR-378a levels in CC patients, patients with colon polyps (CPs), and healthy controls (HCs). The study included 94 CC patients (56 males, 38 females; age range 35 – 82 years, mean age 57.7 ± 10.1 years) and 65 patients with CPs (40 males, 25 females; age range 42 – 91 years, mean age 63.0 ± 11.4 years), including 24 adenomatous polyps, 15 inflammatory polyps, 12 hamartomatous polyps, 14 hyperplastic polyps, and 45 HCs. The correlation between miR-378a and clinicopathology features was analyzed, and diagnostic value of miR-378a in each group was assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.

Results: CC patients had significantly lower plasma miR-378a levels compared to patients with CPs (p <0.0001) and HCs ( p =0.0018). miR-378a levels were significantly correlated with TNM stage, tumor size, and lymph node metastasis (p <0.05). ROC curve analysis illustrated strong diagnostic discriminative power of miR-378a for CC and CPs, with an area under the curve of 0.8202 (95% confidence interval: 0.7528 – 0.8876), sensitivity of 89.36%, and specificity of 66.15%.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that plasma miR-378a may serve as a potential biomarker for early diagnosis of CC.

Keywords

Mir-378a / Colon cancer / Early diagnosis / Marker / Plasma

Acknowledgements

None.

Funding

This project was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (grant number: 2018A0303130252) and the Discipline Construction Project of Guangdong Medical University (grant number: 4SG21011G).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: Hua Ye

Formal analysis: Long Guo, Yan Zhang, Jun Liu

Investigation: Long Guo, Yan Zhang, Jun Liu

Methodology: Hua Ye

Writing – original draft: Long Guo, Yan Zhang, Jun Liu

Writing – review & editing: Xiaodan Li, Yanwen Liang, Wenjing Cheng

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committee of Clinical Research of the Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College (approval no. PJ2016030KY and 3 March 2016).Written informed consent was obtained from all participants, including patients and healthy volunteers, before enrollment in the study. Specifically, healthy volunteers provided written informed consent after having been made aware of the purpose, procedures, potential risks, and benefits of this study.

Consent for publication

Verbal consent was obtained from all providers for the samples used in our study.

Availability of data

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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