Potential prognostic role of serum miRNA-31 in head and neck cancer recurrence

Abstract Background MicroRNAs have played pivotal roles in regulating cancer biology. We designed this study to evaluate the expression of serum microRNAs and assess whether they can be applied as reliable biomarker panels for the prognosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Materials and methods This cohort study was conducted on 31 HNSCC patients. The miRNA-31, miR-99a, and miR-483-5p expression were evaluated using real-time PCR. Patients followed up by physical examination and ultrasound for 1 year (every 3 months). T-test and Chi-square test were used for analysis of the difference between variants and quantitative and qualitative miR-expressions. The difference between disease-free survival (DFS) and variants was evaluated by the rank logarithm test. The P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. We present the Kaplan–Meier survival analysis (KMSA) to show the study participant’s DFS Results There is a significant relation between history of cancer in first-degree relatives (P = 0.02) as well as loco region (P = 0.04) and recurrence in patients. The mean of miR31-5p expression was significantly higher in patients with grade I (P = 0.002). The median of DFS was 11 ± 1.4 months (95% CI 8.3–13.7). Based on the KMSA, there were no statistically significant differences between DFS of patients and sex (P = 0.4), age (P = 0.5), grade (P = 0.5), medical history of first-degree relative (P = 0.6), second-degree relative (P = 0.4), tobacco consumption (P = 0.4), blood pressure (P = 0.6), diabetes (P = 0.3), heart disease (P = 0.1), and the number of systemic diseases (P = 0.8) Conclusion Evaluation of miR31-5p expression after surgery can be applied as a potential biomarker for the survival of HNSCC patients.