Clinical Evaluation of the Diagnostic Role of MicroRNA-155 in Breast Cancer

Fatemeh Hosseini Mojahed; Amir Hossein Aalami; Vahid Pouresmaeil; Amir Amirabadi; Mahdi Qasemi Rad; Amirhossein Sahebkar

doi:10.1155/2020/9514831

Clinical Evaluation of the Diagnostic Role of MicroRNA-155 in Breast Cancer

Int J Genomics. 2020 Sep 7:2020:9514831. doi: 10.1155/2020/9514831. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Fatemeh Hosseini Mojahed¹, Amir Hossein Aalami², Vahid Pouresmaeil³, Amir Amirabadi^{4

5}, Mahdi Qasemi Rad², Amirhossein Sahebkar^{6

7

8}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Sciences, Mashhad Medical Sciences Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran.
² Department of Biology, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran.
³ Department of Biochemistry, Mashhad Medical Sciences Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran.
⁴ Solid Tumors Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
⁵ Reza Radiation Oncology Center, Mashhad, Iran.
⁶ Halal Research Center of IRI, FDA, Tehran, Iran.
⁷ Biotechnology Research Center, Pharmaceutical Technology Institute, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
⁸ Neurogenic Inflammation Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.

Abstract

Aim: Biochemical markers, including microRNAs (miRs), may facilitate the diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer. This study was aimed at assessing serum miR-155 expression in patients with breast cancer and receptors.

Methods: This case-control study was conducted on 36 patients with breast cancer and 36 healthy individuals. After RNA extraction from the patient's serum, cDNA was synthesized. The expression of miR-155 was measured using RT-qPCR. Demographic and histochemical data were extracted from patient documents. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software.

Results: The mean age of subjects in breast cancer and control groups was 47.64 ± 8.19 and 47.36 ± 7.52 years, respectively. The serum miR-155 expression was higher in the cancer group (1.68 ± 0.66) compared to the control group (p < 0.0001). There was a significant relationship between serum miR-155 expression and the tumor grade (p < 0.001), tumor stage (p < 0.001), and tumor size (p < 0.001) of the patients. However, no relationship between miR-155 expression and the presence of lymph node involvement (p = 0.15), HER2 (p = 0.79), Ki-67 (p = 0.9), progesterone receptor (p = 0.54), and estrogen receptors (p = 0.84) was found. The ROC curve analysis showed that the AUC was 0.89 (77.78% sensitivity and 88.89% specificity), and the cutoff was 1.4 (Youden index: 0.6667) for detecting breast cancer.

Conclusion: The findings of this study revealed that serum miR-155 may serve as a potential noninvasive molecular biomarker for breast cancer diagnosis and can help predict the grade of the disease.