Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have increasingly been found to be key mediators of tumor biology and to have potential diagnostic value as biomarkers of particular forms of cancer. TUG1 (taurine-upregulated gene 1) is an lncRNA that has been found to be upregulated in a range of different cancer types, but levels of its expression in the serum of patients with multiple myeloma (MM) are uncertain, as is its diagnostic relevance in such a population. This study therefore explored whether TUG1 levels in patient serum serve as a diagnostic biomarker of MM. We analyzed serum TUG1 levels via quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction in healthy control and MM patient serum and observed clear TUG1 upregulation in MM patients (p < 0.001). We further found that the levels of TUG1 in patient serum correlated with factors including disease clinical stage, β2-microglobulin, total protein, albumin, globulin, and bone injury (p < 0.05), suggesting that this lncRNA may be independently predictive of MM disease stage. We found areas under receiver operating characteristic curves as high as 0.792 (p < 0.001) for TUG1-a value higher than that for either β2-microglobulin (0.747) or albumin (0.597)-with the combination of all three biomarkers improving diagnostic specificity and areas under the curve of 96.9% and 0.836, respectively (p < 0.001). Together, our results suggest that serum TUG1 levels may serve as a valuable biomarker that can help to facilitate MM diagnosis.
Copyright © 2019 ISEH -- Society for Hematology and Stem Cells. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.