The aberrant expression of miR-485 in exhaled breath condensate among patients with non-small cell lung cancer and its clinical significance

Lung cancer is one of the most publicly known reasons of tumor-related mortality worldwide. It is especially important to search for effective methods of early diagnosis. In our study, real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to detect the relative expression of miR-485 in serum and exhaled breath condensate (EBC) specimens from 72 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), also tissues and adjacent tissues were collected from 30 patients, and serum and EBC specimens were collected from 69 healthy subjects. Results show that the relative expression of miR-485 in serum, EBC and tissues of NSCLC patients were extremely downregulated compared to that of the controls. The relative expression miR-485 in stage III-IV NSCLC was obviously downregulated than that in stage I-II. The level of EBC miR-485 was related to lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis, but not to age, gender, smoking history nor the pathological type. The expression of serum miR-485 in NSCLC patients was related to platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and CEA. Correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between miR-485 in three different types of samples. Finally, through receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve and Z test, it was revealed that the detection of miR-485 in EBC had an efficient diagnostic value. To sum up, this study shows that the detection of miR-485 in EBC is feasible with great advantages, and miR-485 may be a promising biomarker in the diagnosis and evaluation of NSCLC.