title: Plasma microRNA might as a potential biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma and chronic liver disease screening.
abstract: Our study aims to investigate the expression signature of plasma microRNA-106b (miRNA-106b, miR-106b) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients and chronic liver disease (CLD) patients compared with healthy controls and further evaluate the potential clinical value of miR-106b as biomarker in HCC detection. In addition, a meta-analysis was conducted to assess the diagnostic performance of miR-106a/b as a biochemical marker for cancer screening. This study was divided into two phases. In the first phase, the expression levels of plasma miR-106b obtained from 108 subjects (47 HCC patients, 25 CLD patients, and 36 healthy controls) were measured by using qRT-PCR. Areas under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves (AUCs) were used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of plasma miR-106. In the second phase, a meta-analysis based on 11 previous researches as well as our current study was conducted to assess the potential clinical value of miR-106 in cancer detection. Plasma levels of miR-106b in HCC patients were significantly higher compared with CLD patients and healthy individuals. ROC curves suggested that plasma miR-106b yielded relative high sensitivities and specificities in differentiating HCC patients from CLD patients or healthy controls with corresponding AUC values of 0.726 and 0.879, respectively. In addition, miR-106b showed a relatively high accuracy in distinguishing CLD patients from healthy controls with its AUC value of 0.703. Furthermore, the meta-analysis for diagnostic performance of miR-106a/b showed a pooled sensitivity of 0.74, specificity of 0.75, and an AUC of 0.81. Subgroup analysis based on samples types revealed a higher diagnostic performance of miR-106 for cancer detection by using non-blood samples. Similarly, miR-106 as biomarker showed a higher diagnostic accuracy for gastric cancer detection. We found that plasma miR-106b has clinical value in the detection of HCC from healthy people and CLD patients. Further large-scale study may be needed to validate our findings.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Affiliated Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, No. 1095 Jiefang Street, Wuhan, 430030, China. jiang_hust@outlook.com.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Immunology, College of Laboratory Medicine, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, 300203, China.
authors.forename: Xue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Hepatic Surgery Center, Affiliated Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, China.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Hepatic Surgery Center, Affiliated Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, China.
authors.forename: Bin-Hao
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood*; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000097:blood* / Q000473:pathology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D055088:Early Detection of Cancer; D058625:End Stage Liver Disease / Q000097:blood* / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000097:blood*; D008875:Middle Aged
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; C542541:MIRN106 microRNA, human; D035683:MicroRNAs
keywords: Chronic liver disease; Diagnosis; Hepatocellular carcinoma; Plasma; miR-106