Expression pattern of miR-16-2-3p and its prognostic values on pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Abstract

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a debilitating illness that easily occurs in adolescents. microRNAs (miRNAs) are potential biomarkers for multiple diseases. This paper was to elaborate on the expression of miR-16-2-3p in childhood ALL and its clinical values on ALL diagnosis and prognosis. First, serum miR-16-2-3p expression in ALL children and healthy volunteers was measured using RT-qPCR. Next, diagnostic potential and prognostic values of miR-16-2-3p on ALL were analyzed through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, Kaplan–Meier survival curve, and multivariate Cox regression analysis, respectively. No significant difference was observed in the clinical baseline data between ALL patients and healthy children. ALL patients showed downregulated serum miR-16-2-3p (0.65 ± 0.27) (p < .01), whose area under the ROC curve was 0.837 with a cut-off value of 0.745 (67.92% sensitivity, 96.94% specificity). ALL patients with higher miR-16-2-3p expression had higher survival rates than those with lower miR-16-2-3p expression. Low miR-16-2-3p expression predicted poor prognosis of ALL patients. After adjusting LDH and lymphomyelocyte proportion (p = 0.003, HR = 0.003, 95%CI = 0.000–0.145), miR-16-2-3p was recognized as an independent prognostic factor for ALL patient survival. Briefly, low serum miR-16-2-3p expression in ALL children could aid ALL diagnosis and predict poor prognosis.

Keywords:

• Acute lymphoblastic leukemia
• miR-16-2-3p
• diagnosis
• prognosis
• receiver operating characteristic curve
• Kaplan–Meier curve
• Cox regression analysis

Author contributions

SYH is the guarantor of integrity of the entire study; SYH contributed to the study concepts, study design, and definition of intellectual content; XRC and CYZ contributed to the literature research; XRC and SYH contributed to the manuscript preparation and SYH contributed to the manuscript editing and review; DW contributed to the clinical studies; CYZ and DW contributed to the experimental studies and data acquisition; XRC and DW contributed to the data analysis and statistical analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All the data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Additional information

Funding

Not applicable.