MicroRNAs (miRNA) are short, single stranded, non-coding RNAs that play an important role in controlling gene expression at the posttranscriptional stage. There is no bladder cancer marker that has been approved as an alternative for diagnostic cystoscopy and urine cytology so far, thus research for alternative, more sensitive, and less invasive methods of bladder cancer detection are being made.
Aim: The aim of the study was to compare the relative expression levels of miRNAs in patients with bladder cancer.
Materials and methods: Urine and serum samples were collected from patients with the diagnosis of bladder cancer (NMIBC 71%, MIBC 29%). We assessed expression of 4 miRNAs (106b-3p, 130b-3, 145- 3p and 199a-5p) using real-time PCR and double delta (ΔΔCt) method. The analysis was performed with the Mann-Whitney U test.
Results: miRNA 145-3p was significantly underexpressed in urine (p=0,0111) compared with control group, whereas in serum we did not find relevant differences between groups (p=0,0903). Overexpression was observed for miRNA 199a-5p tested in urine (p=0,0262) and for miRNA 106b-3p for both urine and serum (p=0,0262 and p=0,0149 respectively). For miR-130b-3 we did not find statistically significant differences neither for urine (p=0,6335) nor serum (p=0,2443).
Conclusions: A correlation between the relative levels of expression for miRNA 106b-3p, 199a-5p and miRNA 145-3p was detected. We also observed differences between the results obtained for urine and serum. In the context of urinary cancers diagnosis urine seems to be more useful material than serum. We plan to continue our studies assessing expression levels of miRNA 106b-3 and miRNA 145-3p.
Keywords: bladder cancer; diagnosis; miRNA; microRNA; urine.
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