Serum miRNAs, a potential prognosis marker of loco-regionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients treated with CCRT.

BACKGROUND: Serum miRNA was once found as potential disease survival index,thus we investigated the role of miRNA in predicting prognosis in loco-regionally advanced NPC patients treated with CCRT. METHODS: This study included two phases: (i) We enrolled 3 NPC patients with recurrence or distant metastasis (experimental group, EG) and 3 NPC patients in clinical remission (control group, CG),who were treated with CCRT within 5 years. The paired serum was collected before and after treatment and biomarkers were discovered by LNA-TaqMan Human MicroRNA Arrays. (ii) we used the bioinformatic analysis, marker selection and an independent validation by qRT-PCR to analyse the serums of 29 NPC patients with recurrent disease or distant metastasis and 19 NPC patients in clinical remission treated with CCRT. Using the Kaplan-Meier method, log-rank test and Cox regression model to estimate the accuracy of the miRNAs to predict PFS and OS, and identified factors significantly associated with prognosis, respectively. RESULTS: Using fold change>/=2.0 or