Expression of lncRNA TCONS_00027978 in hepatocellular carcinoma and its influence on prognosis and survival

Q. Chen, G.-D. Tian, C.-C. Wang

Department of General Surgery, First People’s Hospital of Jinan, Jinan, Shandong, China. wcc333gh@163.com

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• Oncology

OBJECTIVE: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been reported to have crucial roles in the regulation of various tumors. Recently, lncRNA TCONS_00027978 (TCONS_00027978) was found to be downregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study aims at analyzing the value of TCONS_00027978 in valuing the prognosis of HCC patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: The expression of TCONS_00027978 was detected using qRT-PCR in 241 hepatocellular specimens and matched adjacent normal tissues. The association between TCONS_00027978 expression levels and clinicopathological factors was examined. Survival and Cox proportional-hazards regression analyses were performed to explore the association between TCONS_00027978 expression levels and prognosis in HCC patients.

RESULTS: We found that the TCONS_00027978 expression level was significantly decreased in HCC tissues compared with matched normal tissues (p < 0.01). TCONS_00027978 was positively associated with TNM stage (p = 0.002), lymph node metastasis (p = 0.001) and histologic grade (p = 0.002) in HCC patients. In addition, Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that low levels of TCONS_00027978 expression were associated with poorer overall survival (p = 0.002) and disease-free survival (p =0.001). Subsequently, multivariate analyses indicated that low TCONS_00027978 expression was an independent poor prognostic factor for HCC patients.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study is the first to demonstrate the TCONS_00027978 expression as an independent prognostic factor in HCC.

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