Abstract
BACKGROUND: Circular RNA (circRNA) is a new type of noncoding RNA that can serve as ideal biomarkers. Evidence has showed that circRNAs play an important role in carcinogenesis and cancer development. However, little is known about the diagnostic value of circRNAs in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) as well as their associations with clinicopathologic characteristics of patients with PTC. METHODS: The expression levels of hsa_circ_0137287 were detected in 120 PTC and 60 adjacent noncancerous thyroid tissues by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The relationships between the expression of hsa_circ_0137287 in PTC and the clinicopathologic factors were analyzed. Finally, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated to assess the diagnostic value of hsa_circ_0137287 as a biomarker for PTC. RESULTS: The expression of hsa_circ_0137287 was significantly downregulated in PTC tissues compared with adjacent noncancerous tissues (P < .0001). Downregulation of hsa_circ_0137287 correlated with aggressive clinicopathologic characteristics of PTC such as extrathyroidal extension (P < .001), lymph node metastasis (P = .022), advanced T stage (P < .001) and larger tumor size (P < .001). The ROC curves revealed that hsa_circ_0137287 had a potential diagnostic value in predicting malignancy, extrathyroidal extension and lymph node metastasis. The area under curves were 0.8973 (95% CI = 0.8452-0.9494, P < .0001), 0.6885 (95%CI = 0.5908-0.7862, P = .0009), and 0.6691(95%CI = 0.5641-0.7742, P = .0034), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that hsa_circ_0137287 may serve as a novel biomarker for PTC.