Diagnostic value of plasma-derived exosomal miR-223 for epithelial ovarian cancer

Abstract Objectives To evaluate the diagnostic value of plasma exosomal miR-223 and its combination with CA125 for the diagnosis of early-stage epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Patients and methods Exosomes derived from the plasma of 78 EOC patients, 40 patients with epithelial benign ovarian tumors, and 52 healthy participants were isolated using the ultracentrifugation method and identified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and western blot. Results The expression of exosomal miR-223 was significantly upregulated in the plasma of EOC patients compared to that in healthy subjects and patients with benign diseases. The combination of exosomal miR-223 and CA125 from plasma had an equivalent area under the ROC curve (AUC) to CA125 alone for discriminating between EOC and non-EOC cases, including healthy subjects and benign ovarian tumors. However, the AUC value of the combination was 0.944 (95% CI: 0.899–0.990) for differentially diagnosing early-stage EOC from healthy subjects, slightly higher than that of CA125 alone (0.928, 95% CI: 0.875–0.981), with a sensitivity and specificity of 0.9784 and 0.885, respectively. Conclusion Our data suggest that plasma exosomal miR-223 can be used as a complement to CA125 to increase the diagnostic power for differentiating early-stage EOC from healthy subjects.