Expression profiling of serum microRNA-101 in HBV-associated chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) represent a class of evolutionarily conserved, non-coding small RNAs (18-25 nt) that have emerged as master regulators of several biological processes. Recently, circulating miRNAs have also been reported to be promising biomarkers for various pathological conditions. In the present study, we report the comparative expression profiling of microRNA-101 (miR-101) in serum and tissue samples from chronic hepatitis B (CHB), HBV-associated liver cirrhosis (HBV-LC), and HBV-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HBV-HCC) patients and healthy controls. The serum miR-101 levels were found to be significantly downregulated in the HBV-HCC patients compared with the HBV-LC patients (P<0.001), CHB patients (P<0.001) and healthy controls but were upregulated in the HBV-LC patients compared with the CHB patients (P<0.001) and healthy controls (P<0.001). Consistent with the serum data, the expression of miR-101 was also upregulated and downregulated in the HBV-LC and HBV-HCC tissue samples, respectively. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis of serum miR-101 yielded an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.976 with 95.5% sensitivity and 90.2% specificity when differentiating between HBV-HCC and HBV-LC. Our results suggest that the serum miR-101 level can serve as a potential non-invasive biomarker to differentiate HBV-HCC from HBV-LC.