Original Article Down-regulation of miR-182 and miR-183 acts as potential predictor biomarkers in progression, metastasis, and poor prognosis of non-small cell lung cancer

microRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in cancer development, progression, and metastasis. The aim of this study was to explore the expression of miR-182 and miR-183 and its potential relevance to clinicopathological features and patient survival. miRNAs expression in 73 pairs of NSCLC tissues and their adjacent non-tumor tis- sues was measured by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Additionally, the correlation of miR-182 and miR-183 expression with clinicopathological features and prognosis of NSCLC patients were analyzed. Our results suggested that miR-182 expression was significantly down-regulated in NSCLC tissues compared with adjacent non-tumor tis- sues. On the other hand, miR-183 expression was also clearly down-regulated in NSCLC tissues. Furthermore, our findings indicated that decreased expression of miR-182 and miR-183 was strongly correlated with poor differen - tiation, advanced tumor stage, and lymph nodes metastasis (P<0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival and log-rank analysis suggested that decreased expression of miR-182 and miR-183 was strongly correlated with shorter overall survival (log-rank test, P<0.05). Multivariate Cox proportional hazards model revealed that down-regulated expression of miR-182 and miR-183 were independent prognostic biomarkers of overall survival of NSCLC patients. These find- ings suggested that down-regulation of miR-182 and miR-183 was associated with the progression and metastasis of NSCLC and would be applied as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of NSCLC.