Combination of serum miRNAs with Cyfra21-1 for the diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer

In this study, we screened 381 miRNAs by RT-qPCR in serum samples of 44 NSCLC patients and 22 healthy individuals to identify altered miRNAs, and validated the results in a training and test cohorts with 300 serum samples (178 NSCLC and 122 healthy individuals). Three miRNAs (miR-194, miR-652 and miR-660) were selected from 380 miRNAs by two normalization methods in the discovery cohort, and miR-652 and miR-660 were confirmed to be significantly upregulated in ADC and SCC patients compared with healthy controls both in the training and test cohorts (p < 0.01). The combination of miR-652 and miR-660 exhibited significantly higher AUC than miR-660, CEA and CA125 for ADC and SCC diagnosis in both the training and test cohorts (p < 0.05). Furthermore, miR-652 + miR-660 + Cyfra21-1 significantly improved the diagnostic ability to determine ADC patients from healthy controls. For SCC diagnosis, miR-652 + miR-660 + Cyfra21-1 exhibited comparable ability to Cyfra21-1. The results indicate that the combination of miR-652 + miR-660 and Cyfra21-1 has the potential to help in the diagnosis of NSCLC, especially for ADC.