Abstract:

Objective To observe the expression of circulating microRNA-4677 (miR-4677) of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and explore the clinical significance. Methods The expression of plasma miR-4677 of 83 patients with OSCC (OSCC group) and 44 healthy controls (control group) were detected by the stem-loop RT and real-time PCR. The diagnostic performance of using the miR-4677 expression level as OSCC biomarker was evaluated. Results Stem-loop RT-PCR could specifically amplify miR-4677. Compared with the control group, the expression of plasma miR-4677 of the OSCC group was significantly lower (P<0.01). The results of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve showed that the plasma miR-4677 level could efficiently distinguish patients with OSCC from healthy people and AUC_ROC was 0.882. When the optimal cutoff value of 0.625 (fold value) was chosen, the sensitivity and specificity of plasma miR-4677 for diagnosing the OSCC were 79.5% and 91.6%, respectively. Conclusion The circulating miR-4677 is satisfactory for diagnosing the OSCC and can be used as the biomarker for early diagnosis of OSCC. It is a novel idea of genetic diagnosis of cancer.

Key words: oral squamous cell carcinoma, microRNA-4677, circulating, plasma detection, tumor marker