The importance of miR-122 in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Introduction and Objective: It is very important to determine hepatocellular carcinoma at an early stage for prognosis and patient management. There is still no ideal marker to detect hepatocellular carcinoma at early stage. MicroRNA-122 may be a novel biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma.Materials and methods: This study was performed in 2011-2012 at Cukurova University, Faculty of Medicine, Balcalı Hospital with 43 hepatocellular carcinoma and 43 control patients. The peripheral blood was collected from patients and controls. MicroRNA-122 levels were determined by using real-time-PCR method.Results: Serume miR-122 amount in hepatocellular carcinoma group was significantly higher than the level found in the control group. (0.030173±0.053>0.00493±0.015, p<0.0001). According to the area under the ROC curve (0.724) the patient group were identified for the cut-off value of miR-122. In addition, patient?sother diagnostic, clinical and prognostic data were compared with miR-122 levels.Conclusion: In our study we showed amounts of circulating miR-122 in different clinical stages of hepatocellular carcinoma in patient?s serume with real timePCR method, also we compared patient?s circulating miR-122 with other diagnostic, prognostic and clinical values. MicroRNA?s are thought to be novel serum biomarkers in cancer diagnosis, prognosis and follow-up. To become a novel biomarker, miR-122 needs large-scale studies. In this period the value of the patient's own serum miR-122can be used in the situations of viral hepatitis, hepatocellular carcinoma, liver tumour resection or liver transplant before and after these procedures. But serume miR-122 alone may not be a good biomarker to show diagnosis, prognosis and surveillance of hepatocellular carcinoma. To use other diagnostic, clinical, prognostic indicators in conjunction with miR-122 may be more meaningful. Key Words: Hepatocellular carcinoma, microRNA-122