Expression of long noncoding RNA lncRNA-n336928 is correlated with tumor stage and grade and overall survival in bladder cancer.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been implicated playing important roles in human urologic cancers. In the present study, microarray analysis was initially performed to screen the differentially expressed lncRNAs between bladder cancer tissues and paired adjacent non-cancerous tissues (n = 3). Subsequent qRT-PCR validation was conducted using tissue samples from 95 patients with bladder cancer. Results showed that the expression level of lncRNA-n336928 (noncode database ID: n336928) was significantly higher in bladder cancer tissues compared to that in adjacent noncancerous tissues (P < 0.001). Chi-square test showed that expression of lncRNA-n336928 was positively correlated with bladder tumor stage and histological grade (P < 0.001). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that patients with bladder cancer with high expression of lncRNA-n336928 had shorter overall survival time compared to the patients with low expression of lncRNA-n336928. Multivariate analysis indicated that lncRNA-n336928 was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival for bladder cancer patients. Collectively, our study shows that high expression of lncRNA-n336928 is associated with the progression of bladder cancer, and that lncRNA-n336928 might serve as a biomarker for prognosis of bladder cancer.