Open Access

ARTICLE

Study on the Value of Ultrasound Elastography Combined with Plasma miRNA Expression in the Early Detection of Breast Cancer

Qian Zhang^1,2,#, Yuanyuan Cao^2,#, Mingming Fang³, Qin Yang², Pingyang Zhang^1,*

1 Department of Ultrasound, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210006, China
2 Department of Ultrasound, Nanjing Jiangning District Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning Service Center, Nanjing, 211100, China
3 Department of Healthy Examination, Nanjing jiangning Hospital, Nanjing, 211100, China

* Corresponding Author: Pingyang Zhang. Email:
# These authors contribute equally to this work

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Biomarkers for Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Selection: from Basic Research to Practice)

Oncologie 2022, 24(4), 717-727. https://doi.org/10.32604/oncologie.2022.026998

Received 08 October 2022; Accepted 21 November 2022; Issue published 31 December 2022

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignant tumor in women, and its morbidity and mortality are increasing each year, due to the lack of specific clinical symptoms in the early stage of BC, and the lack of diagnostic methods for early breast cancer. Therefore, identifying an effective diagnostic method for early BC has become urgent. Materials and Methods: Breast lesions with a histological diagnosis that were examined by ultrasonic elastography (UE) in our department from June 2020 to December 2021 were reviewed. qRT-PCR was performed to measure the expression levels of miR-144-5p and miR-26b-5p in the plasma of patients with BC. The receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve and area under the curve (AUC) were used to investigate the potential diagnostic value of miR- 144-5p, miR-26b-5p and the elastographic score in BC. Results: The ultrasonic elastography score(UES) was found to be significantly upregulated in BC compared with that in benign breast lesions, and the AUC, sensitivity and specificity were 0.809, 0.717 and 0.806 for distinguishing BC from benign breast lesions, respectively. miR-144-5p and miR-26b- 5p were found to be upregulated in the plasma of BC patients, and miR-144-5p+miR-26b-5p had 0.781 sensitivity and 0.780 specificity for the diagnosis of BC. Furthermore, we found that the diagnostic performance of miR-144-5p and miR-26b-5p combined with UES for BC had 0.913 sensitivity and 0.890 specificity. Conclusions: The combination of plasma miR-144-5p, miR-26b-5p and UES has a very high clinical application value for the early detection of BC.

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Keywords

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