Association of Serum and Tumor Tissue microRNA Profile with Aggressiveness of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma in an Iranian Population

Objectives: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common malignancy of thyroid. We aimed to investigate the association of let-7f, miR146b-5p, miR-34b, miR-16 and miR-877-5p expression in blood circulation and tumor with aggressiveness of PTC. Methods: A total of 18 patients with aggressive PTC and 18 patients with non-aggressive PTC were studied. The microRNAs expressions were evaluated using real-time PCR. Fold changes (FC) of the miRs in aggressive PTC patients were calculated via calibration with mean of expression of the miRs in non-aggressive groups. Results: MiR-16 showed significant up regulation in blood (FC=2.85; P=0.024), miR-34 showed significant down regulation in blood (FC=0.19; P<0.001) and tumor tissue (FC=0.19; P<0.001), miR-146 showed significant up regulation in blood (FC=48.10; P<0.001) and tumor tissue (FC=60.61; P<0.001), miR-877 showed significant down regulation in blood (FC=0.22; P<0.001), and let-7 showed significant down regulation in blood (FC=0.09; P<0.001) and tumor tissue (FC=0.13; P<0.001). Conclusion:  In general, our study in an Iranian population supported the previous results. Up regulation of miR-146 was associated with aggressiveness of PTC.