Diagnostic Value of MicroRNA 21 in Endometrial Cancer and Benign Lesions and its Differential Expression with Clinicopathological Parameters.

Background: Endometrial cancer is one of the most common malignancies among women worldwide. Although this cancer is often diagnosed at early stages, the need for biomarkers of diagnosis remains a necessity to overcome conventional invasive procedures of diagnosis.

Objective: In our study, we aim to investigate the diagnostic value of microRNA-21 in endometrial cancer and its relation to clinicopathological features.

Methods: We used RT-qPCR to measure the expression of microRNA-21 in 71 tumor tissues, 53 adjacent tissues, and 54 benign lesions.

Results: Our results show that microRNA-21 is a potential biomarker for endometrial cancer with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.925 (95% CI = 0.863 - 0.964, P<0.0001). The sensitivity was 84.51% (95% CI = 74.0 - 92.0) and specificity was 86.79% (95% CI = 74.7 - 94.5). For discrimination between benign lesions and controls the AUC was 0,881 with a sensitivity of 100% (95% CI = 93.4 - 100.0) and specificity of 66.04% (95% CI = 51.7 - 78.5), and for discriminating benign lesions from tumors the AUC was 0,750 with a sensitivity of 54.93% (95% CI = 42.7 - 66.8) and specificity of 90.74% (95% CI = 79.7 - 96.9). We also found that tumors with elevated microRNA-21 expression are of advanced FIGO stage, high histological grades, and have cervical invasion, myometrial invasion and distant metastasis.

Conclusion: Our findings support the important role of miR-21 as a biomarker to diagnose endometrial cancer. Further studies on minimally invasive/noninvasive samples such as serum, blood, and urine are necessary to provide a better alternative to current diagnosis methods.