Diagnostic and Prognostic Potentials of Long Noncoding RNA ELF3-AS1 in Glioma Patients

الملخص EN

Objective.

Accumulating evidence implies that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a crucial role in predicting survival for glioma patients.

However, the potential function of lncRNA ELF3-antisense RNA 1 (ELF3-AS1) in tumors remained largely unclear.

The aim of this study was to explore the expression of lncRNA ELF3-antisense RNA 1 (ELF3-AS1) and evaluate its functions in glioma patients.

Patients and Methods.

ELF3-AS1 expressions were examined by RT-PCR in 182 pairs of glioma specimens and adjacent normal tissues.

The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was performed to estimate the diagnostic value of ELF3-AS1.

The chi-square tests were used to examine the associations between ELF3-AS1 expression and the clinicopathological characters.

The overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) were analyzed by log-rank test, and survival curves were plotted according to Kaplan-Meier.

The prognostic value of the ELF3-AS1 expression in glioma patients was further analyzed using univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses.

Loss-of-function assays were performed to determine the potential function of ELF3-AS1 on the proliferation and invasion of glioma cells.

Results.

The ELF3-AS1 expression level was significantly higher in glioma specimens compared with adjacent nontumor specimens (p<0.01).

A high expression of ELF3-AS1 was shown to be associated with the WHO grade (p=0.023) and KPS score (p=0.012).

ROC assays revealed that high ELF3-AS1 expression had an AUC value of 0.8073 (95% CI: 0.7610 to 0.8535) for glioma.

Using the Kaplan-Meier analysis, we found that patients with a high ELF3-AS1 expression had significantly poor OS (p=0.006) and DFS (p=0.0002).

In a multivariate Cox model, we confirmed that ELF3-AS1 expression was an independent poor prognostic factor for glioma patients.

The functional assay revealed that knockdown of ELF3-AS1 suppressed the proliferation and invasion of glioma cells.

Conclusions.

Our findings confirmed that ELF3-AS1 functions as an oncogene in glioma and indicated that ELF3-AS1 is not only an important prognostic marker but also a potential therapy target for glioma.