Mohamed AA, Ali-Eldin ZA, Elbedewy TA, El-Serafy M, Ali-Eldin FA, AbdelAziz H. MicroRNAs and clinical implications in hepatocellular carcinoma. World J Hepatol 2017; 9(23): 1001-1007 [PMID: 28878865 DOI: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i23.1001]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Dr. Amal Ahmed Mohamed, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biochemistry Department, National Hepatology and Tropical Medicine Research Institute, 10 Kasar El Eini Street, Cairo 11796, Egypt. amalahmedhcp@yahoo.com
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Prospective Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
World J Hepatol. Aug 18, 2017; 9(23): 1001-1007 Published online Aug 18, 2017. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i23.1001
MicroRNAs and clinical implications in hepatocellular carcinoma
Amal Ahmed Mohamed, Zainab A Ali-Eldin, Tamer A Elbedewy, Magdy El-Serafy, Fatma A Ali-Eldin, Hossameldin AbdelAziz
Amal Ahmed Mohamed, Biochemistry Department, National Hepatology and Tropical Medicine Research Institute, Cairo 11796, Egypt
Zainab A Ali-Eldin, Hossameldin AbdelAziz, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11331, Egypt
Tamer A Elbedewy, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Tanta University, Tanta 31111, Egypt
Magdy El-Serafy, Department of Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo 11796, Egypt
Fatma A Ali-Eldin, Department of Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11331, Egypt
Author contributions: Mohamed AA designed the research; Ali-Eldin ZA, Elbedewy TA and Ali-Eldin FA performed the clinical part of the research; Mohamed AA performed the biochemical part of the work; Elbedewy TA performed statistical analysis of the data; Ali-Eldin ZA, Elbedewy TA and Ali-Eldin FA wrote the paper; El-Serafy M and AbdelAziz H revised the paper.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
Correspondence to: Dr. Amal Ahmed Mohamed, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biochemistry Department, National Hepatology and Tropical Medicine Research Institute, 10 Kasar El Eini Street, Cairo 11796, Egypt. amalahmedhcp@yahoo.com
Telephone: +20-2-23649005 Fax: +20-2-23649005
Received: February 14, 2017 Peer-review started: February 17, 2017 First decision: April 20, 2017 Revised: May 31, 2017 Accepted: June 19, 2017 Article in press: June 20, 2017 Published online: August 18, 2017 Processing time: 184 Days and 14.2 Hours
Abstract
AIM
To assess the role of some circulating miRNAs (miR-23a, miR-203, miR338, miR-34, and miR-16) as tumor markers for diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
METHODS
One hundred and seventy-one subjects were enrolled, 57 patients with HCC, 57 patients with liver cirrhosis (LC) and 57 healthy subjects as control group. Severity of liver disease was assessed by Child Pugh score. Tumor staging was done using Okuda staging system. Quantification of Micro RNA (miR-23a, miR-203, miR338, miR-34, and miR-16) was performed.
RESULTS
All studied miRNA showed significant difference between HCC and cirrhotic patients in comparison to healthy control. miR-23a showed statistically significant difference between HCC and cirrhotic patients being higher in HCC group than cirrhotic. miR-23a is significantly higher in HCC patients with focal lesion size equal or more than 5 cm, patients with multiple focal lesions and Okuda stage III. At cutoff value ≥ 210, miR-23a showed accuracy 79.3% to diagnose HCC patients with sensitivity 89.47% and specificity about 64.91%. At cut off level ≥ 200 ng/mL, serum alpha fetoprotein had 73.68% sensitivity, 52.63% specificity, 43.75% PPV, 80% NPV for diagnosis of HCC.
CONCLUSION
MicroRNA 23a can be used as a screening test for early detection of HCC. Also, it is related to larger size of tumour, late Okuda staging and multiple hepatic focal lesions, so it might be a prognostic biomarker.
Core tip: MicroRNA is promising as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. miR-23a can be used in screening of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and it gives better results than alpha fetoprotein. It is also related to more progressive HCC so it can be used as predictor of prognosis.
