Basic Study
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World J Hepatol. Aug 27, 2022; 14(8): 1562-1575
Published online Aug 27, 2022. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v14.i8.1562
Assessment of circulating levels of microRNA-326, microRNA-424, and microRNA-511 as biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma in Egyptians
Samar Samir Youssef, Asmaa Elfiky, Mohamed M Nabeel, Hend Ibrahim Shousha, Tamer Elbaz, Dalia Omran, Mohammad Saeed Marie, Mohammad A Elzahry, Amr Abul-Fotouh, Ahmed Hashem, Mohamed F Guda, Ashraf O Abdelaziz
Samar Samir Youssef, Department of Microbial Biotechnology, National Research Centre, Cairo 1211, Egypt
Asmaa Elfiky, Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Research Centre, Cairo 1211, Egypt
Mohamed M Nabeel, Hend Ibrahim Shousha, Tamer Elbaz, Mohammad Saeed Marie, Ashraf O Abdelaziz, Department of Endemic Medicine and Hepatogastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo 11562 Egypt
Dalia Omran, Mohammad A Elzahry, Amr Abul-Fotouh, Ahmed Hashem, Department of Endemic Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo 1256, Egypt
Mohamed F Guda, Theodor Bilharz Research Institute, Cairo 1256, Egypt
Author contributions: Youssef SS conceived the study; Youssef S and ElFiky A performed the experiments, data analysis, and statistical analysis; Elbaz T and Omran D wrote the first draft; Shousha HI performed clinical examinations, conceptualization, and patient data curation; Nabeel MM, Shousha HI, Marie MS, Elzahry MA, Hashem A, Guda MF, and Abdelaziz AO performed clinical examinations; all authors contributed to manuscript reviewing and editing.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the local research ethics committee of the Endemic Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, and it was conducted according to guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki 1975. Informed written consent was obtained from each participant. All patients signed a written informed consent before inclusion in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Samar Samir Youssef, PhD, Professor, Department of Microbial Biotechnology, National Research Centre, El Behoos st, Cairo 1211, Egypt. samaryoussef67@gmail.com
Received: October 22, 2021
Peer-review started: October 22, 2021
First decision: December 27, 2021
Revised: January 14, 2022
Accepted: July 27, 2022
Article in press: July 27, 2022
Published online: August 27, 2022
Processing time: 307 Days and 14.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the sixth most common malignancy worldwide. Recent cancer incidence data confirmed that the global age normalization rate of primary liver cancer is 10.1/100000, with a male/female ratio of 3:1. The diagnosis of HCC usually occurs in the late stages, resulting in an elevated death rate; this makes HCC the third deadliest malignancy. We examined whether circulating miRNAs326, miRNA-424, and miRNA-511 could serve as promising candidate non-invasive biomarkers for HCC. Such biomarkers could be used for targeted gene therapy research and may assist in monitoring the severity of HCC.