Abstract
BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of gynecological cancer related death in females worldwide. Our previous study demonstrated that decreased expression of microRNA (miR-126) promoted ovarian cancer angiogenesis and invasion by targeting VEGF-A. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical validity of miR-126 as a prognostic marker for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). PATIENT CONCERNS: The patients with EOC ranged in age from 27 to 79 years, with a mean age of 57 years. DIAGNOSIS: All patients had never had chemotherapy or biotherapy, and the diagnoses were confirmed pathologically in all cases. METHODS: MiR-126 levels in EOC tissue and normal ovaries were determined by qRT-PCR. Its prognostic value was analyzed using the Cox proportional hazards regression model. Survival curves were drawn using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: In this study, we found that compared to normal tissues, miR-126 expression was lower in EOC tissues, particularly in omental metastases. Though in our previous study we found that miR-126 may inhibit proliferation and invasion in EOC cell lines, but in this study patients with elevated miR-126 expression exhibited poor overall survival and relapse free survival. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that miRNA-126 was an independent prognostic factor for poor relapse-free survival (P = .044). Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the area under the curve of miR-126 was 0.806 (95% confidence interval, 0.669-0.942). CONCLUSION: In this study, we established miR-126 as a potential independent biomarker for predicting recurrence in patients with EOC.