A panel of five serum miRNAs as a potential diagnostic tool for early-stage renal cell carcinoma

Circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) are emerging as clinically useful tools for cancer detection; however, little is known about their early diagnostic impact on RCC. The levels of 754 serum miRNAs were initially determined using a TaqMan Low Density Array in two pooled samples from 25 RCC and 25 noncancer controls. Markedly dysregulated miRNAs in RCC cases were subsequently validated individually by qRT-PCR in another 107 patients and 107 controls arranged in two sets. The serum levels of miR-193a-3p, miR-362 and miR-572 were significantly increased whereas the levels of miR-28-5p and miR-378 were markedly decreased in patients with RCC, even in those with stage I disease, compared with the noncancer controls (P<0.01). The areas under the ROC curve (AUCs) for the 5 combined miRNAs were 0.807 (95% CI, 0.687-0.928) and 0.796 (95% CI, 0.724-0.867) for the training set and the validation set, respectively. Furthermore, the panel enabled the differentiation of stage I RCC from controls with AUC of 0.807 (95% CI, 0.731-0.871), a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 71%. This panel of 5 serum miRNA may have the potential to be used clinically as an auxiliary diagnostic tool for the early detection of RCC.