Downregulation of miR-361-5p associates with aggressive clinicopathological features and unfavorable prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer.

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of miR-361-5p expression levels on non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survival. PATIENTS AND METHODS A total of 183 patients with NSCLC who underwent surgery between October 2007 and April 2010 were included in this study. Expression levels of miR-361-5p were detected by using qRT-PCR. The association of miR-361-5p expression with clinicopathologic characteristics of NSCLC patients was analyzed. Kaplan-Meier Plotter was performed to identify the prognostic roles of miR-361-5p in NSCLC patients. Finally, multivariate analysis was performed using the Cox proportional hazard analysis. RESULTS Results indicated that miR-361-5p was lowly expressed in NSCLC compared with adjacent non-malignant tissues (p < 0.01). And low miR-361-5p expression in NSCLC was significantly correlated with TNM stage (p = 0.000), lymph node metastasis (p = 0.001) and lymphatic invasion (p = 0.032). Kaplan-Meier analysis with the log-rank test indicated that low miR-361-5p expression had a significant impact on overall survival (p < 0.001). Furthermore, Multivariate analyses indicated that miR-361-5p represented an independent predictor for overall survival of NSCLC (p = 0.007). CONCLUSIONS Our work revealed that miR-361-5p played critical roles in NSCLC progression and could represent a novel prognostic marker in NSCLC patients.