Abstract: Background and purpose: Osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignant bone tumor in the children and young adults. Until now, there is no prognostic indicator with high specificity and high sensitivity. This study investigated the relationship between miR-92a level in palsma and clinical pathological characteristics, as well as the prognosis in osteosarcoma. Methods: The plasma from 30 healthy volunteers who underwent physical examination and from 45 cases of osteosarcoma before and after operation were collected. The miR-92a level was detected by realtime fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RTFQ-PCR) method. According to the relative expression ≥5 of miR-92a, the osteosarcoma patients were divided into 2 groups: miR-92a high expression group and low expression group. Results: The miR-92a level in palsma from osteosarcoma is significantly higer than that from healthy volunteers. Before surgery, the miR-92a level was markedly higher than after surgery. There was no correlation between the miR-92a level and the gender, age, tumor location, tumor size and histological type. However, significant correlation was found with Enneking grade, tumor cell necrosis rate and lung metastasis. Compared with the low-expression group, high miR-92a expression was associated with a significantly shorter overall survival using Kaplan-Meier analysis (P=0.035). Conclusion: The results suggest a significant relationship between miR-92a and survival ratio. miR-92a expression level may be a useful prognostic indicator in osteosarcoma.

Key words: Osteosarcoma, miR-92a, Real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction