Clinical significance of miR-34a expression in thyroid diseases - an 18F-FDG PET-CT study

Long Chen; Conghui Yang; Jun Feng; Xin Liu; Yadong Tian; Lei Zhao; Ran Xie; Chao Liu; Sheng Zhao; Hua Sun

doi:10.2147/CMAR.S143110

Clinical significance of miR-34a expression in thyroid diseases - an ¹⁸F-FDG PET-CT study

Cancer Manag Res. 2017 Dec 15:9:903-913. doi: 10.2147/CMAR.S143110. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Long Chen^#¹, Conghui Yang^#¹, Jun Feng^#², Xin Liu^#³, Yadong Tian¹, Lei Zhao¹, Ran Xie¹, Chao Liu⁴, Sheng Zhao¹, Hua Sun¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of PET/CT Center.
² Department of Radiology.
³ Department of Pathology.
⁴ Department of Nuclear Medicine, Yunnan Tumor Hospital, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the possible roles of miR-34a expression in thyroid lesions, to unravel the correlation between fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake and miR-34a expression and moreover, to discover the underlying mechanisms by which miR-34a regulates FDG avidity.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 75 patients with pathology-confirmed thyroid diseases who underwent ¹⁸F-FDG positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) within 3 months before undergoing thyroid surgery and miR-34a analysis from June 2012 to July 2017. ¹⁸F-FDG uptake of thyroid lesions was also analyzed semiquantitatively using maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax). The association between miR-34a expression and clinicopathological variables (age, sex, TNM stage, histopathology, lesion numbers, location and ¹⁸F-FDG avidity) was investigated. When there were multiple lesions in thyroid bed, only the one with the highest ¹⁸F-FDG uptake was analyzed. Next, we inhibited the miR-34a expression in TPC-1 cells and detected the expression of glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1) mRNA and protein.

Results: In the patients cohort, miR-34a was upregulated in those with malignant thyroid diseases compared with benign lesions. The expression of miR-34a was associated with tumor stages, histopathological types and SUVmax. There was an inverse relationship between miR-34a expression and SUVmax in patients with thyroid diseases (Spearman correlation coefficient = -0.553, P < 0.0001). With an SUVmax of 4.3 as the threshold, sensitivity and specificity of the prediction of miR-34a expression (low or high) were 70% and 94.3%, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.843 (95% confidence interval: 0.749, 0.936; P = 0.001). Inhibiting miR-34a in TPC-1 cells significantly increased GLUT1 mRNA and protein expression.

Conclusion: miR-34a expression was upregulated in thyroid lesions, negatively correlated with SUVmax and can be predicted by FDG SUVmax. In addition, miR-34a may regulate FDG avidity via targeting GLUT1.

Keywords: PET/CT; miR-34a; thyroid cancer.