Detection of increased serum miR-122-5p and miR-455-3p levels before the clinical diagnosis of liver cancer in people with type 2 diabetes

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 11; no. 1; p. 23756
• Main Authors: Lee, Heung Man, Wong, Willy Kwun Kiu, Fan, Baoqi, Lau, Eric Siu, Hou, Yong, O, Chun Kwan, Luk, Andrea On Yan, Chow, Elaine Yee Kwan, Ma, Ronald Ching Wan, Chan, Juliana Chung Ngor, Kong, Alice Pik Shan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 09.12.2021; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/67; 692/53/2423; Biomarkers, Tumor; Circulating MicroRNA; Computational Biology - methods; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus (non-insulin dependent); Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 - complications; Diagnosis; Early Detection of Cancer; Female; Gene Expression Profiling; Health risks; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Liquid Biopsy - methods; Liver cancer; Liver Neoplasms - complications; Liver Neoplasms - diagnosis; Liver Neoplasms - etiology; Male; MicroRNAs - blood; MicroRNAs - genetics; miRNA; multidisciplinary; Patients; Prognosis; Reproducibility of Results; ROC Curve; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Serum levels; Transcriptome
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-03222-x

People with type 2 diabetes (T2D) have increased cancer risk. Liver cancer (LC) has a high prevalence in East Asia and is one of the leading causes of cancer death globally. Diagnosis of LC at early stage carries good prognosis. We used stored serum from patients of Hong Kong Diabetes Register before cancer diagnosis to extract RNA to screen for microRNA markers for early detection of LC in T2D. After screening with Affymetrix GeneChip microarray with serum RNA from 19 incident T2D LC (T2D-LC), 20 T2D cancer free (T2D-CF) and 20 non-T2D non-cancer patients, top signals were validated in a 3-group comparison including 1888 T2D-CF, 127 T2D-LC, and 487 T2D patients with non-liver cancer patients using qPCR. We detected 2.55-fold increase in miR-122-5p and 9.21-fold increase in miR-455-3p in the T2D-LC group. Using ROC analysis, miR-122-5p and miR-455-3p jointly predicted LC with an area under the curve of 0.770. After adjustment for confounders, each unit increase of miR-455-3p increased the odds ratio for liver cancer by 1.022. Increased serum levels of miR-122-5p and miR-455-3p were independently associated with increased risk of incident LC in T2D and may serve as potential biomarkers for early detection of LC in T2D.