Serum microRNA-18a, MicroRNA-21 and microRNA-92a as diagnostic markers in colorectal cancer patients.

PURPOSE:The present study was done to measure the serum relative expression levels of microRNA-18a, microRNA-21, and microRNA-92a in colorectal cancer patients compared to healthy volunteers to evaluate their use as diagnostic markers in colorectal cancer patients. METHODS:The relative serum quantification of each of microRNA-18a, microRNA-21, and microRNA-92a normalized to microRNA-16 was studied in 50 patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer and 50 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers using real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PR). RESULTS:The expression levels of microRNA-18a, microRNA-21, and microRNA-92a were found to be significantly up-regulated in serum of colorectal cancer patients compared to the healthy control group. MicroRNA-18a demonstrated an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of 0.906; microRNA-21 yielded an AUC of 0.918, while microRNA-92a demonstrated an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of 0.672 when discriminating colorectal cancer patients from healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS:Serum microRNA-18a and/or microRNA-21 might serve as non-invasive diagnostic markers in colorectal cancer, while serum microRNA-92a is better to be combined with either microRNA-18a or microRNA-21 as it has limited usefulness when used as sole diagnostic marker.

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