Investigation of miR-25 expression level in urine samples of people with prostate cancer

After breast cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. Screening is recommended by examining prostate-specific antigen levels and performing accurate rectal tests, but there are still problems with the specificity and sensitivity of these tests. A group of diagnostic biomarkers are microRNAs, a class of small non-coding RNAs that play a broad regulatory role in molecular signaling pathways in the cell. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in the expression level of miR-25 in the urine of patients with prostate cancer (metastatic and non-metastatic groups) and healthy individuals.

70 urine samples from prostate cancer patients (32 metastatic and 38 non-metastatic) and 30 from healthy subjects with negative biopsy reports were collected. RNA was extracted with Trizol, after the cDNA synthesis, the expression level of miR-25 in the urine was detected by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Statistical analysis of data was calculated with REST 2009.

The results showed that miR-25 significantly reduced expression in patients with prostate cancer compared with healthy individuals (P = 0.001). Also, miR-25 in the metastatic group (p = 0.002) had a lower expression than the non-metastatic group (p = 0.045) compared to healthy individuals.

The results of this study showed that miR-25 had a significant decrease in expression in patients with prostate cancer compared to healthy individuals, which with further studies is hoped to be able to diagnose patients with prostate cancer and even distinguish metastatic and non-metastatic groups.