Plasma microRNA profiling in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients reveals miR-548q and miR-483-5p as potential biomarkers

MicroRNAs(miRNAs), which play a role in tumorigenesis, may also serve as diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers. However, studies on human miRNA profiles in plasma from nasopharyngeal carcinoma(NPC) patients are in their infancy. Here, we used microarrays to perform systematic profiling of human miRNAs in plasma from NPC patients. We subsequently used real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction(Q-PCR) to validate miRNAs with aberrant expression that could serve as potential biomarkers. By comparing the plasma miRNA profiles of 31 NPC patients and 19 controls, 39 of 887 human miRNAs were found to be aberrantly expressed. Considering the fold change and P value, miR-548q and miR-483-5p were validated in 132 samples from 82 NPC patients and 50 controls. Moreover, high expression of miR-548q and miR-483-5p was further found in 3 NPC cell lines and clinical biopsy tissues from 54 NPC patients and 22 controls. Our results revealed that miR-548q and miR-483-5p are potential biomarkers of NPC. Combining the receiver operating characteristic(ROC) analyses of these 2 miRNAs, an area under the ROC curve(AUC) of 0.737 with 67.1% sensitivity and 68.0% specificity were obtained, showing the preliminary diagnostic value of plasma miRNAs. Moreover, most NPC patients with a poor outcome exhibited high expression(> median) of miR-548q(70.6%) and miR-483-5p(64.7%) in tissue samples, indicating their prognostic value. The high expression levels of miR-548q and miR-483-5p in plasma, cell lines, and clinical tissues of NPC patients indicate that their roles in NPC should be explored in the future.

Alcohol and tea consumption in relation to the risk ofnasopharyngeal carcinoma in Guangdong, China

To investigate whether alcohol and tea con-sumption has an etiological association with nasophar-yngeal carcinoma(NPC)in a high-incident population,a large scale case-control study was conducted.The study included 2846 individuals in Guangdong Province,China,with 1387 newly diagnosed cases of NPC and 1459 frequency-matched controls.Exposure histories of alcohol and tea consumption were obtained via personal inter-views.Information regarding socio-demographic charac-teristics(age,sex,education,dialect and household type),family history of NPC,Epstein-Barr virus(EBV)infection,dietary habits and other potential confounding factors was also studied.An analysis was performed using uncondi-tional logistic regression to calculate odds ratios(OR)and 95%confidence intervals(CI).The risk of NPC was found to be associated with habitual alcohol consumption and tea consumption.Tea consumption has been associated with a decreased occurrence of NPC(OR=0.62),while con-sumption of alcohol was associated with a complex effect.Specifically,moderate consumption of alcohol was associated with decreased risk of NPC,while overuse,especially strong distillate spirits,appeared to be a risk factor.