Tissue expression level of lncRNA UCA1 is a prognostic biomarker for colorectal cancer

Background: The aberrant expression of urothelial carcinoma-associated 1 (UCA1) was reported in gastric cancer, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, melanoma, breast cancer, tongue squamous cell carcinomas, as well as colorectal cancer (CRC). In the present study, we investigated the clinical significance and prognostic value of UCA1 in CRC. Methods: A total of 121 fresh cancer tissue samples were obtained from Binzhou Medical University Hospital between April 2009 and December 2014. The expression levels of UCA1 were examined by quantitative real-time PCR. Kaplan-Meier method was used to estimate the survival rate, and differences in survival of subgroups of the study were compared by log-rank test. Multivariate analysis was performed to estimate the association between clinical and genetic features and overall survival using Cox proportional hazard models. Results: We found that UCA1 expression was significantly higher in CRC tissues compared with adjacent normal tissues (P<0.001). UCA1 expression was significantly associated with TNM stage (P=0.006), lymph node metastasis (P=0.012), distant metastasis (P=0.037) and tumor differentiation (P<0.001). Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with higher expression levels of UCA1 had significantly shorter overall survival than those with lower expression levels (P=0.012). Furthermore, the multivariate Cox regression model demonstrated that UCA1 expression (P=0.027) was an independent prognostic factors for CRC. Conclusions: Our results indicated that UCA1 might be an important indicator of poor survival rate and an independent prognostic factor for CRC. More high quality studies are needed to confirm our finding in the future.