A High-Accuracy Model Based on Plasma MiRNAs Diagnoses Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma: A Single Center with 1001 Samples

Objectives: Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) is a highly malignant cancer. More than 70% of patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage. The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of plasma miR-21, miR-122, and CA19-9, hoping to establish a novel model to improve the accuracy for diagnosing iCCA.

Materials And Methods: Plasma miR-21 and miR-122 were detected in 359 iCCA patients and 642 controls (healthy, benign liver lesions, other malignant liver tumors). All 1001 samples were allocated to training cohort ( = 668) and validation cohort ( = 333) in a chronological order. A logistic regression model was applied to combine these markers. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used as an accuracy index to evaluate the diagnostic performance.

Results: Plasma miR-21 and miR-122 were significantly higher in iCCA patients than those in controls. Higher plasma miR-21 level was significantly correlated with larger tumor size ( = 0.030). A three-marker model was constructed by using miR-21, miR-122 and CA19-9, which showed an AUC of 0.853 (95% CI: 0.824-0.879; sensitivity: 73.0%, specificity: 87.4%) to differentiate iCCA from controls. These results were subsequently confirmed in the validation cohort with an AUC of 0.866 (0.825-0.901). The results were similar for diagnosing early (stages 0-I) iCCA patients (AUC: 0.848) and CA19-9 iCCA patients (AUC: 0.795).

Conclusions: We established a novel three-marker model with a high accuracy based on a large number of participants to differentiate iCCA from controls. This model showed a great clinical value especially for the diagnosis of early iCCA and CA19-9 iCCA.