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
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Esophageal carcinoma is a common digestive tract cancer, which frequently recurs after treatment. MiR-1304 is a newly discovered non-coding RNA, which shows differential expression in other cancers, but its clinical value in esophageal carcinoma remains unclear.

Research motivation

To identify potential diagnostic and prognostic indicators of esophageal cancer recurrence.

Research objectives

To determine the diagnostic and prognostic value of miR-1304 in esophageal carcinoma recurrence.

Research methods

Data on miRs with potential differences in esophageal carcinoma were screened from the Cancer Genome Atlas. A quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction was employed to determine the expression of miR-1304 in esophageal carcinoma patients, and the clinicopathological features of these patients were analyzed. Based on the analysis of screened data and the expression of miR-1304 in esophageal carcinoma patients, the function of miR-1304 was evaluated. Moreover, the patients were followed-up to analyze prognosis. Target genes of miR-1304 were predicted, and the functions of these genes were analyzed.

Research results

The expression of miR-1304 in the tissues and serum of patients increased, similar to that seen in the database. Patients with high expression of miR-1304 had increased rates of tumor ≥ 3 cm, low differentiation and stage II + III disease. MiR-1304 had diagnostic value in identifying esophageal carcinoma, tumor size, differentiation and TNM staging. Tumor size, differentiation, TNM staging, and miR-1304 were independent risk factors for recurrence of esophageal carcinoma, and had certain predictive and diagnostic value for recurrence of this disease. Patients with high expression of miR-1304-3p had a lower survival rate. Multivariate analysis revealed that tumor size, differentiation, recurrence and miR-1304 were independent factors for prognosis. Furthermore, the target genes had 18 functions with aP < 0.05 according to gene ontology enrichment analysis and 11 signal pathways with aP < 0.05 according to the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes. In addition, there were 269 relationship pairs according to String analysis of protein co-expression, of which the co-expression pairs with epidermal growth factor were the most common.

Research conclusion

MiR-1304 can be used as a potential indicator for the diagnosis and recurrence of esophageal carcinoma, and survival of patients.

Research perspectives

In future research, the molecular mechanism of miR-1304 in esophageal carcinoma will be studied.