Detection Of Circulating Microrna-152and Microrna-602in Liver Cancer Patients And The Initial Exploration Of Their Clinical Significance

Objective: To detect the serum levels of circulating miR-152andmiR-602in HBV positive and HBV negative patients with liver cancerbefore and after surgery. And their application value in the diagnosis of livercancer and evaluation of therapeutic effects was explored.Methods: Clinical information and both the pre-operational andpost-operational serum samples were collected from12patients (including7HBV positive patients and another7of HBV negative) with confirmedprimary liver cancer, and the clinical information and serum samples from7healthy controls were also collected. The total serum miRNA was extracted,and the levels of circulating miR-152and miR-602were quantified byreal-time quantitative RT-PCR. The differences in circulating miR-152andmiR-602between pre-operational and post-operational groups, or betweenpre-operational and healthy control group, or between post-operational andhealthy control group were analyzed.Results: In the HBV positive group, the level of circulating miR-152was found to be significantly downregulated between pre-operational and post-operational groups, or between pre-operational and healthy controlgroup (P<0.05). However, no significance was found between thepost-operational and healthy control group，Compared with those of thehealthy control group, both the pre-operational and post-operational levelsof circulating miR-602were significantly downregulated (P<0.05),However, its level between the pre-operational and post-operational groupwas not statistically different. In the HBV negative group, The median levelsof both circulating miR-152and miR-602were found to be not significantlydifferent between pre-operational and post-operational groups, or betweenpre-operational and healthy control group, or between post-operational andhealthy control group (P>0.05).Conclusion: Compared with those of the healthy control group, thecirculating miR-152and miR-602levels in the HBV negative group werenot significantly changed. However, those in the HBV positive group weresignificantly downregulated. While surgery was shown to significantlyaffect the level of circulating miR-152in the HBV positive group, and thelevel of circulating miR-602in this group was not significantly changed. It isspeculated that circulating miR-152and miR-602may be employed as novelserum markers for both the diagnosis of HBV-positive liver cancer and theevaluation of therapeutic effect.