Long non-coding RNA Loc554202 expression as a prognostic factor in patients with colorectal cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expression and clinical significance of long non-coding RNA Loc554202 (lncRNA Loc554202) in human colorectal cancer (CRC).

PATIENTS AND METHODS: The expression of Loc554202 was detected in 178 CRC tissues and matched normal colorectal tissue samples by qRT-PCR. The potential relationship between Loc554202 levels and clinicopathological features of CRC Kaplan-Meier curves and multivariate Cox proportional models were used to study the impact on clinical outcome.

RESULTS: Our findings showed that Loc554202 appeared to have lower expression in the CRC tissues, compared with the adjacent non-cancerous colorectal tissues. Down-regulated expression of Loc554202 was significantly associated with TNM stage, histologic grade, and lymph node metastasis (p < 0.05), but not other clinical parameters. Kaplan-Meier analysis clearly illustrated that the patients with the lower expression of Loc554202 had a worse outcome compared to patients with higher Loc554202 expression (p < 0.001). Furthermore, in a multivariate Cox model, we found that Loc554202 expression was an independent poor prognostic factor for both 5-year OS (p = 0.007) and 5-year DFS (p = 0.004) in CRC.

CONCLUSIONS: Our data indicated that Loc554202 may serve as a promising biomarker for predicting the prognosis of CRC.