Background: miR-27a-3p has been found dysexpressed in various cancers. The aim of the present study was to clarify the prognostic value of miR-27a-3p in patients with oral cancer.
Methods: We used quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assay to detect the expression of miR-27a-3p in the tissue of oral cancer and adjacent normal specimens. The association of miR-27a-3p with clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed via the Chi-square test. Kaplan-Meier survival and Cox regression analysis were performed to evaluate the prognostic value of miR-27a-3p in oral cancer patients.
Results: The down-regulated expression of miR-27a-3p was found in oral cancer tissues compared with the matched noncancerous samples (P<0.05). And its expression was influenced by TNM stage (P=0.032), T stage (P=0.014) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.025). Kaplan–Meier analysis result showed that the decreased level of miR-27a-3p expression was associated with a poor overall survival of oral cancer patients. Additionally, multivariate cox regression analysis revealed that the low expression of miR-27a-3p was an independent prognostic maker in oral cancer patients (HR=0.462, 95% CI=0.223-0.957, P=0.038).
Conclusions: Taken together, the expression pattern of miR-27a-3p was decreased in oral cancer tissues. The decreased expression of miR-27a-3p was a potential prognostic biomarker in patients with oral cancer.