Abstract
BACKGROUND/AIMS: Uterine leiomyoma (ULM) is a kind of gene-involved benign tumor, which is located in the front of female reproductive tract. It is one of the most common reproductive tract tumors in women, which leads to abnormal menstruation, repeated pregnancy loss, and other serious gynecological diseases. Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) have attracted much more attention in the process of exploring the molecular mechanisms of tumorigenesis. Furthermore, the deregulated miRNAs had been reported to play important roles in ULM pathology. METHODS: In this study, we assessed the expression level of microRNA-199a-5p (miR-199a-5p) in human ULM by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. After that cell counting kit 8, colony formation, 5-ethynyl-20-deoxyuridine, flow cytometry, and Western blot analyses were performed to investigate the effects of miR-199a-5p on ULM cell proliferation and apoptosis. RESULTS: We confirmed that miR-199a-5p was significantly downregulated in human ULM. The results of function analyses showed that miR-199a-5p inhibited cell proliferation and induced cell apoptosis in vitro. Bioinformatics tool showed oncogene MED12 was one of the target genes of miR-199a-5p, which mediated the effect of miR-199a-5p on the ULM. CONCLUSION: Our results showed that miR-199a-5p functioned as an antitumor factor in human ULM cells. These findings broaden the current findings on the function of miR-199a-5p into the ULM pathogenesis, and miR-199a-5p may serve as a prognosis and therapeutic target for the ULM and its related diseases.