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AIM: Acting as a tumor suppressor, microRNA (miR)-125b shows aberrant low expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and researchers have found that its dysregulation has a close relationship with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Here, we investigated the expression profile of this miRNA in the plasma of healthy subjects and patients with chronic HBV-related liver diseases in order to confirm the feasibility of this circulating miRNA as a differential diagnostic biomarker for HBV-induced HCC (HBV-HCC). METHODS: A total of 242 individuals were enrolled in this study. The expression levels of plasma miR-125b were examined using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction technology. RESULTS: The levels of plasma miR-125b were remarkably decreased in HBV-HCC patients compared to healthy controls and HBV subjects without HCC (all P < 0.001), and the low plasma miR-125b levels in HBV-HCC patients were associated with higher prevalence of metastasis (P = 0.021). The receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses indicated that plasma miR-125b presented a high accuracy (area under the curve = 0.891, 0.958, 0.958) for diagnosing HBV-HCC cases from healthy controls and patients with chronic hepatitis B and HBV-related liver cirrhosis, respectively. In addition, our study found that the expression levels of plasma miR-125b in HBV patients without HCC were higher than those in healthy subjects (P < 0.001); it yielded an area under the curve of 0.691 in discriminating patients with chronic HBV infection who were negative for HCC from healthy controls. CONCLUSION: The measurement of plasma-based miR-125b holds promise as a diagnostic marker for HBV-HCC differential diagnosis and for chronic HBV viral infection. Those HBV-infected individuals with increased risk of HCC would be detected early through monitoring the changes in this circulating miRNA.
Chen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.