MicroRNA-194-5p could serve as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in myelodysplastic syndromes.

Trisomy 8 and trisomy 1q are the most frequent chromosomal abnormalities in Korean patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). MicroRNA (miRNA) deregulation is involved in the development of hematological malignancies, including MDS, and cancer-associated genomic regions are known to encode miRNAs. The aim of the present study was to investigate the involvement of miRNAs encoded by chromosomes 8 and 1q in MDS. For this, the expression of nine miRNAs encoded by chromosome 8 (miR-30b-5p, miR-30d-5p, miR-101-3p, miR-124-3p, miR-151a-5p, miR-320a, miR-486-5p, miR-596, and miR-875-5p) and three miRNAs encoded by chromosome 1q (miR-29c-3p, miR-194-5p, and miR-214-3p) was compared between 65 MDS patients and 11 controls. We found a significant upregulation of miR-194-5p (5.1-fold, P=0.002) and miR-320a (2.94-fold, P=0.016) in MDS patients compared with controls. The patients with low miR-194-5p expression showed a significantly decreased overall survival (P=0.049). The areas under the miR-194-5p and miR-320a ROC curves were 0.797 (P=0.002) and 0.729 (P=0.016), respectively. Although these findings need to be validated in a larger patient population, our results indicate that miR-194-5p is a candidate diagnostic biomarker for MDS and that low miR-194-5p expression could be associated with poor overall survival for MDS patients.