Expression Analysis of MicroRNA-222 in Breast Cancer.

BACKGROUND: miR-221 and miR-222 are homologous miRNAs located in tandem, within 1 kb from each other, on human x chromosome. Recent studies declared that microRNA-222 is aberrantly expressed in various malignancies. The goal of this research was to measure the expression level of has-miR-222-3P and reveal its diagnostic and prognostic importance in breast malignancy.

METHODS: In this study, 40 pairs of cancerous and matched adjacent non-cancerous breast tissue were collected from patients, and real-time PCR was used to measure the relative expression of miR-222.

RESULTS: Our study clarified that microRNA-222 is enhanced in tumor tissues in comparison with normal tissue margins (p ≤ 0.05) and overexpression of miR-222 was not associated with clinicopathological factors such as age, BMI, menopausal status, histological type, grade, stage, tumor size, lymph node metastasis (p > 0.05). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis displayed an optimum cutoff point of < 4.17 to prove that miR-222 is a useful biomarker in breast cancer diagnosis.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings on miR-222 suggest that it could be a potentially useful target for control and management of breast malignancy.