Downregulation of miR-148b as biomarker for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma and may serve as a prognostic marker.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have a large number of various target genes in different cancer types, which may result in many biological functions. Thus, identifying the molecular mechanisms of miRNAs may effect on the complexity of cancer progression via regulation of gene. In the current study, we utilized real-time PCR to quantify the diction of miR-148b in trail hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) specimen and normal tissues. Furthermore, we evaluated the relationship of miR-148b and clinicopathological features with survival of HCC patients. Therefore, we evaluated the level of miR-148b expression in 101 HCC patients and also in 40 normal control cases. The result suggested lower expression in tumor tissues than normal control tissues (0.96 ± 0.14; 1.84 ± 0.20, P < 0.05). Our findings suggest that the declined expression of miR-148b can considerably be linked to tumor node metastasis (TNM) stage (stages III and IV; P = 0.021) and vein invasion (P = 0.029). Nevertheless, miR-148b expression was not related to sex (P = 0.674), age (P = 0. 523), size of tumor (P = 0.507), liver cirrhosis, and histologic grade (P = 0.734). Survival analysis showed that low expression was remarkably related to overall survival (P = 0.012). Furthermore, multivariate survival test suggested that decline of miR-148b diction was linked to poor survival in HCC patients. Our results suggested that miR-148b is decreased in HCC. Therefore, we concluded that miR-148b may play its role in the prognosis of HCC.