Figure 1.
The flow chart of the study design.
Table 1.
Subject information of the case-control study.
Figure 2.
Serum levels of the selected miRNAs in 68 pairs of GC and control subjects in the second-stage validation.
The median fold changes of miRNA levels comparing GC with control were given and the Wilcoxon tests were performed to examine the difference between two groups. The relative levels of miRNAs (log10 scale at Y-axis) were normalized to the spiked-in cel-miR-39.
Figure 3.
Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis using eight serum miRNAs for discriminating 68 GCs from 68 controls.
Serum (A) miR-744, (B) miR-376c, (C) miR-221 and (D) let-7e yielded the largest areas under the ROC curves (AUCs).
Figure 4.
Association of the selected serum miRNA levels with GC differentiation grades and DYS.
(A–C) Box plots of serum miR-221, miR-376c and miR-744 levels in 24 well or moderately differentiated and 43 poorly differentiated GC patients. (D–F) Box plots of serum miR-221, miR-376c and miR-744 levels in 46 DYS subjects and matched controls. The Mann-Whitney U tests (A–C) and the Wilcoxon tests (D–F) were performed to examine the difference between two groups, respectively. The relative levels of miRNAs (log10 scale at Y-axis) were normalized to the spiked-in cel-miR-39 (A–F).
Table 2.
Information of the 58 GC cases for the retrospective study.
Figure 5.
The temporal trends of serum miR-221, miR-376c and miR-744 levels during GC development.
(A) In the retrospective study, miRNA levels were examined in the pre-diagnosis serum samples of 58 cases that were classified into four groups according to the time interval between blood collection and GC diagnosis. (B) The trend tests of miRNA levels over time were performed in 20 GC cases who provided three serum samples at three time points of the follow-up (in the years of 1989, 1992 and 1999; or in the years of 1989, 1994 and 2003). The mean values of relative miRNA levels that were normalized to the spiked-in cel-miR-39 and transformed on a logarithmic scale were shown with the error bar representing 95% CI (A–B).