MiR-370 functions as prognostic marker in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

Large body of evidence has shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) have the potential to serve as prognosis marker. This study is designed to investigate the expression of miR-370 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients and to analyze its potential prognostic value.Quantitative real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) was performed to examine the miR-370 level in HCC tissue and matched normal tissue from 83 HCC patients. The correlation of miR-370 level in HCC tissue with the clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed. Moreover, the Kaplan-Meier method and multivariable Cox regression were utilized to analyze survival data and independent prognostic factors, respectively.Our results showed that low miR-370 level significantly correlated with tumor node metastasis stage (p=0.013) and vein invasion (p=0.0082). However, no significant relation was found between miR-370 expression and gender (p=0.1275), age (p=0. 0915), size of tumor (p=0.0823), liver cirrhosis (p=0.2508) and tumor grade (p=0.5377). Moreover, addition, survival analysis suggested that low expression of miR-370 linked shorter overall survival compared with high expression and multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis also showed that miR-370 function as an independent prognostic marker.Low level of miR-370 correlates with poor prognosis and miR-370 level can be considered as an independent prognostic marker in clinical evaluations.