Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 14, 2020; 26(6): 670-685
Published online Feb 14, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i6.670
Expression of miR-1304 in patients with esophageal carcinoma and risk factors for recurrence
Yun-Gang Luo, Li-Wei Duan, Xuan Ji, Wen-Yuan Jia, Yun Liu, Mao-Lei Sun, Guo-Min Liu
Yun-Gang Luo, Xuan Ji, Wen-Yuan Jia, Yun Liu, Mao-Lei Sun, Guo-Min Liu, Jilin Provincial Medicine Anti-Tumor Engineering Center, the Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130041, Jilin Province, China
Yun-Gang Luo, Xuan Ji, Yun Liu, Mao-Lei Sun, Department of Stomatology, the Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130041, Jilin Province, China
Li-Wei Duan, Department of Gastroenterology, the Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130041, Jilin Province, China
Wen-Yuan Jia, Guo-Min Liu, Department of Orthopedics, the Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130041, Jilin Province, China
Author contributions: Luo YG and Duan LW designed the research; Liu GM and Ji X performed the research; Jia WY analyzed the data; Liu Y and Sun ML wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Second Hospital of Jilin University Ethics Committee.
Informed consent statement: All patients in our study provided informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Guo-Min Liu, PhD, Director, Jilin Provincial Medicine Anti-Tumor Engineering Center, the Second Hospital of Jilin University, No. 218 Ziqiang Street, Changchun 130041, Jilin Province, China. l168uw@163.com
Received: November 8, 2019
Peer-review started: November 8, 2019
First decision: December 23, 2019
Revised: January 6, 2020
Accepted: January 11, 2020
Article in press: January 11, 2020
Published online: February 14, 2020
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Esophageal carcinoma is a malignant gastrointestinal tumor with a very poor prognosis. MicroRNA (miR)-1304 is a newly discovered non-coding RNA, which shows differential expression in other cancers, and its clinical value in esophageal carcinoma remains unclear.

AIM

To explore the expression of miR-1304 in patients with esophageal carcinoma and its clinical value.

METHODS

The expression of miR-1304 in patients with esophageal carcinoma was analyzed based on the data on miR in esophageal carcinoma downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction was adopted to determine the expression of miR-1304 in the tissues and serum of patients. The clinical diagnostic value of miR-1304 and independent factors for recurrence and prognosis of esophageal carcinoma were then analyzed. The potential target genes of miR-1304 were predicted, and then analyzed based on gene ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes, and Genomes, and protein-protein interaction.

RESULTS

The expression of miR-1304 in the tissues and serum of patients with esophageal carcinoma increased, and was also increased according to the database. Patients with high expression of miR-1304 suffered increased rates of tumor ≥ 3 cm, low differentiation and stage II + III. miR-1304 had a diagnostic value in identifying esophageal carcinoma, tumor size, differentiation and TNM stage. Tumor size, differentiation, TNM stage, and miR-1304 were independent risk factors for recurrence of esophageal carcinoma, and they had certain predictive and diagnostic value for the recurrence of esophageal carcinoma. Seventy-eight patients showed a 3-year survival rate of 38.46%, and patients with high expression of miR-1304 had a relatively lower survival rate. Multivariate analysis revealed that tumor size, differentiation, recurrence and miR-1304 were independent factors for the prognosis of patients. MiRTarBase, miRDB, and Targetscan predicted 20 target genes in total. Gene ontology enrichment analysis found 18 functions with aP < 0.05, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes, and Genomes analysis found 11 signal pathways with aP < 0.05. String analysis of protein co-expression found 269 relationship pairs, of which co-expression with epidermal growth factor was the most common.

CONCLUSION

miR-1304 can be used as a potential indicator for the diagnosis and recurrence of esophageal carcinoma and for survival of patients with this disease.

Keywords: miR-1304, Recurrence, Prognosis, Diagnosis, Bioinformatics analysis, The Cancer Genome Atlas, Esophageal carcinoma

Core tip: In recent years, the morbidity and mortality of esophageal carcinoma have increased significantly. However, there are few clinical tumor markers related to esophageal carcinoma. miRNA has been a hot research topic in recent years. This study analyzed the expression of miR-1304 in patients with esophageal carcinoma, and found that miR-1304 was highly expressed in these patients, and was an independent factor for recurrence and prognosis of esophageal carcinoma. miR-1304 is expected to become a potential index for predicting prognosis and recurrence of esophageal carcinoma.