Objective  To investigate the expression of miR-1180 in serum and tissues of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and to analyze its relationship with clinicopathological characteristics and its value for disease diagnosis and prognostic evaluation.

  Methods  Seventy-two patients with NSCLC and 50 patients with benign lung disease who received treatment at the same period were selected as the study subjects. Fasting venous blood of NSCLC patients and those with benign lung diseases was collected, and the cancer tissues and adjacent tissues were collected from NSCLC patients. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction(qRT-PCR)was used to detect the relative expression of miR-1180 in serum and tissues. All patients with NSCLC were followed up for 5 years, and their survival status was counted.

  Results  The relative expression levels of miR-1180 in serum of the NSCLC patients were significantly higher than those in patients with the benign lung diseases (P < 0.05); the relative expression of miR-1180 in the cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in the adjacent tissues (P < 0.05). The relative expression of miR-1180 in serum and tissues of NSCLC patients was not correlated with gender, age, smoking history and pathological type (P > 0.05), but was related to tumor size, TNM stage, lymph node metastasis and degree of differentiation (P < 0.05). Serum miR-1180 had a high value in the auxiliary diagnosis of NSCLC, the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.747, the 95%CI was 0.580~0.914, and the accuracy was 0.754. The 5-year survival rate of patients with miR-1180 high expression was significantly lower than that of patients with low expression of miR-1180 (P < 0.05).

  Conclusion  MiR-1180 is abnormally highly expressed in serum and cancer tissues of NSCLC, and its expression level is closely related to the malignant progression of tumors. MiR-1180 can be used as a new biomarker for diagnosis and prognostic evaluation of NSCLC.