The up-regulation of long non-coding RNA AFAP1-AS1 is associated with the poor prognosis of NSCLC patients.

Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) is actively transcribed from human genome and has been considered to participate in many processes of various cancers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the expression of LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 and its prognostic value in NSCLC. LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 expression was detected by qRT-PCR which demonstrated that the expression was significantly increased in tumor tissues compared with the adjacent non-cancerous tissues and healthy tissues. The clinical stage, smoking history, infiltration degree, lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis were all proved to impact the expression of LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 (P<0.05). Kaplan-Meier analysis was performed to evaluate the overall survival of NSCLC patients with different expression level of LncRNA AFAP1-AS1, and results showed that patients with high LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 expression lived shorter than those with low LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 expression (Log rank test, P<0.001). Besides, the prognostic value of LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 as well as the clinical features was assessed by Cox regression analysis. The outcome revealed that LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 was closely related to the prognosis of NSCLC. Taken together, LncRNA AFAP1-AS1 was up-regulated in NSCLC tissues and it could be an independent prognostic indicator for NSCLC patients.