Decreased expression of miR-1254 is associated with cancer aggressiveness and predicts poor outcome in cervical cancer.

OBJECTIVE: MiR-1254 has been demonstrated to play a critical role in the progression of several types of cancer, but its role in cervical cancer remains largely unclear. The aim of the present study was to examine the expression pattern of miR-1254, and its clinical significance in cervical cancer.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: RT-PCR was performed to evaluate miR-1254 levels in 181 pairs of cervical cancer specimens and adjacent noncancerous tissues. The correlation between the miR-1254 levels and the clinicopathological factors of the glioma patients was analyzed. The Kaplan-Meier method was applied to analyze overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS). A Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used for multivariate analyses of prognostic values.

RESULTS: Our results showed that miR-1254 expression was significantly down-regulated in cervical cancer tissues compared with adjacent non-tumor tissues (p<0.01). The level of miR-1254 was observed to be negatively associated with lymphatic invasion (p=0.004), distant metastasis (p=0.009), and FIGO stage (p = 0.002). More importantly, cervical cancer patients with lower miR-1254 expression had significantly poorer RFS (p=0.002) and OS (p=0.004). Moreover, in a multivariate Cox model, we found that miR-1254 expression was an independent prognostic factor for both RFS and OS in cervical cancer (p=0.001 and 0.004, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS: The current results demonstrated that low miR-1254 expression was associated with poor outcomes in patients with cervical cancer, indicating miR-1254 could be a potential prognostic marker for cervical cancer patients.