Elevated serum level of lncRNA-HIF1A-AS1 as a novel diagnostic predictor for worse prognosis in colorectal carcinoma.

To evaluate the diagnostic efficacy and prognostic value of serum long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) HIF 1alpha-antisense RNA 1 (HIF1A-AS1) in patients with colorectal carcinoma (CRC). We obtained serum samples from 151 CRC patients and 160 health controls. Serum level of HIF1A-AS1 was detected via real-time PCR (RT-PCR). Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis was conducted to determine the diagnostic value of HIF1A-AS1. Then HIF1A-AS1 in CRC was divided into high- and low-expression groups, and the associations of the HIF1A-AS1 serum level with clinicopathological features and prognosis were analyzed. Serum level of HIF1A-AS1 was significantly increased from CRC patients as compared to those of health controls (P< 0.05). ROC curve analysis revealed a relative high diagnostic performance of HIF1A-AS1 to distinguish CRC from health controls, with the area under the curves (AUC) of 0.960 (95% CI: 0.940 ∼ 0.980; P< 0.001). Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that differentiation degree, tumor size, TNM stage, T stage, N stage, M stage and serum level of HIF1A-AS1 were all linked to CRC prognosis (All P< 0.05). Compared to CRC patients with low HIF1A-AS1 expression, high expression of patients were associated with a shorter 5-year-survival rate (P< 0.001). Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that lower differentiation degree, tumor > 5 cm and higher expression of HIF1A-AS1 were independent risk factors affecting the survival rate of patients with CRC (P< 0.05). Our results illustrated that elevated serum HIF1AAS1 could be clinically functioned as a potential biomarker for CRC diagnoses and prognosis.