Increased expression of microRNA-191 as a potential serum biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis in human osteosarcoma

BACKGROUND: MicroRNA (miR)-191 has been observed to be overexpressed in osteosarcoma cell lines in comparison with osteoblasts. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the clinical significance of miR-191 in human osteosarcomas. METHODS: Quantitative PCR was performed to detect miR-191 expression in osteosarcoma tissues and patients' sera. RESULTS: miR-191 expression levels, both in osteosarcoma tissues and patients' sera, were significantly higher than those in matched adjacent normal bone tissues and healthy controls (both P < 0.001). Importantly, miR-191 could efficiently screen osteosarcoma patients from healthy controls (Area under receiver operating characteristic curve, AUC = 0.808). Then, high serum miR-191 expression was significantly associated with advanced clinical stage (P = 0.001), large tumor size (P = 0.01) and positive distant metastasis (P = 0.001). Moreover, overall and disease-free survival durations in patients with high miR-191 expression were both shorter than those with low miR-191 expression. Multivariate analysis further identified serum miR-191 level as an independent and significant prognostic factor for both overall survival (P = 0.01) and disease-free survival (P = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Our data provide new insights for the involvement of miR-191 in osteosarcoma and suggest that the increased expression of miR-191 may be associated with aggressive tumor progression and adverse outcome. Of note, serum miR-191 quantification may be a promising biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis in osteosarcoma.