Bladder cancer is the most common malignant tumor of the urinary system, and it is also an important cause of death by cancer globally. Increasing number of studies have shown that miRNAs can be used as prognostic markers for cancers. This study made use of the data available in the Cancer Genome Atlas in order to statistically analyze reported expression levels of miRNAs in samples from bladder urothelial carcinoma patients. Clinical features from a total of 399 patients and the expression data for 1,581 kinds of miRNA were included in the study. Single factor Cox regression analysis was used to identify miRNAs related to survival times for the patients. Then, through multifactors Cox regression we sorted out the independent prognostic miRNAs for the carcinoma. According to our results, 19 miRNAs were closely related to the survival times of patients with bladder urothelial carcinoma, and 3 miRNAs including hsa-mir-518b (p=0.02), hsa-mir-192 (p=0.04) and hsa-mir-7705 (p=0.04) should be useful as independent prognostic factors in patients. In addition, the survival time of those expressing high levels of hsa-mir-7705 and hsa-mir-192 was less than the survival time of those with low expression levels. However, there were no obvious differences in the survival times between high and low expressors of hsa-mir-518b. According to our results, hsa-mir-7705, hsa-mir-192 and hsa-mir-518b can be applied as independent prognostic markers for bladder urothelial carcinoma.
Keywords: The Cancer Genome Atlas; bladder urothelial carcinoma; cancer; miRNAs; prognostic markers.