Expression of MicroRNAs-106b in Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer

Aim: To explore the expression of microRNA-106b (miRNA-106b) in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Settings And Design: miRNAs are short regulatory RNAs that negatively modulate gene expression at the posttranscriptional level, and are deeply involved in the pathogenesis of several types of cancer. miRNA-106b has been shown to play an oncogenic role in tumor progression. The expression of miRNA-106b is detected in this study.

Subjects And Methods: Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and Northern blotting were used to detect the expression level of miRNA-106b in 200 NSCLC samples.

Statistical Analysis Used: All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 16.0 software. Results were statistically evaluated using the Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann-Whitney U-test. Survival curves were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and P < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.

Results: miRNA-106b expression is increased in NSCLC tissues. Statistical analysis showed that overexpression of miRNA-106b was strongly associated with lymph node metastasis, stage of tumor node metastasis classification, and poor prognosis. Moreover, there was a significant difference in the miRNA-106b expression levels between smoking and nonsmoking patients. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that miRNA-106b was an independent prognostic factor for NSCLC patients.

Conclusions: These data suggest that aberrantly expressed miRNA-106b may contribute to the development of NSCLC.