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Background and Aims: MicroRNAs including miR146a have a regulatory role on the expression of genes and act with binding to 3ʹ-UTR region of the genes. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is involved in carcinogenesis as an inflammatory marker, and microRNA-146a (miR-146a) as a negative regulatory factor. We aimed to evaluate miR146a expression as a prognostic or diagnostic biomarker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and also an association between miR146a and COX2 expression. Materials and Methods: We quantified the level of miR-146a and COX-2 expression in cancerous and adjacent normal tissue samples obtained from 34 patients with ESCC, using real-time–PCR. Statistical analyses were conducted using one-sample t-test. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve and Kaplan–Meier analysis were applied to assay miR146a as a diagnostic and prognostic marker, respectively, during 4 years of the study. Furthermore, the Cox regression model was performed to assay the hazard ratio (HR). The association between miR-146a and COX2 expression level in ESCC patients was evaluated by nonparametric Spearman's rho analysis. Results: The results revealed a reduction of miR-146a expression in 50% of cancerous tissue when compared with adjacent normal regions (P-value=0.127). COX-2 expression in 80% of ESCC patients was higher than in the controls (P-value=0.001). Overall, in 60% of cases, direct association was seen between microRNA-146a and COX-2 expression level (correlation coefficient= 0.438, P-value=0.011). COX2 can be considered as a diagnostic biomarker (AUC=0.834, sensitivity=72%, specificity =83%, P-value< 0.0001) but miR146a cannot be considered as a diagnostic biomarker (AUC=0.553, sensitivity=88%, specificity =28%, P-value=0.453). Survival analysis by Kaplan–Meier method showed miR146a and COX2 expression can be probably considered as prognostic biomarkers for ESCC because patients with high expression of miR146a had 7 months shorter life span and patients with low expression of COX2 had 8 months shorter life span. Conclusion: COX2 expression is a diagnostic biomarker. MiR-146a and COX2 expression can probably be considered as prognostic biomarkers for survival in ESCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past few years have shown an increase in the amount of data that are being generated in all fields. This increase is due to human needs to all aspects from business to science. One of these fields is medicine with uncertain data. For these amount of data there exists computational methods and tools for analysis and it requires medical informatics researchers and specialists to choose the most appropriate method to cope with these data. This paper presents one of the common data mining tasks, association rule mining, when considering particular continuous time series measurements. The most important goal of this study is dealing with and processing time series data for the purpose of extracting linguistic rules. Also, comparing the results of this method with the results of classical statistical analysis is the second objective. A three-part analytical pipeline is used in this study as a new mining approach, consisting of data preparation, data transformation, and data analysis to elicit knowledge about the interaction of the parameters measured and the effect of different drugs on the rats. Weka data mining toolkit has been employed for extracting knowledge in the form of association rules and the important rules identified by this toolkit are interpreted for their medical significance. Discretizing time series data and linguistic representation of rules have been demonstrated. This study exhibits this new approach by analysis of the data of the cardiovascular responses to specific medications in rats that have been recorded by lab chart software in the laboratory. Once the time series was discretized, simple association rule mining methods are used to extract rules. The association rules that are discovered can provide the domain expert with new knowledge about the possible effects of injected rats or to help to improve annotation consistency1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: MicroRNAs including miR146a have a regulatory role on the expression of genes and act with binding to 3'-UTR region of the genes. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is involved in carcinogenesis as an inflammatory marker, and microRNA-146a (miR-146a) as a negative regulatory factor. We aimed to evaluate miR146a expression as a prognostic or diagnostic biomarker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and also an association between miR146a and COX2 expression., Materials and Methods: We quantified the level of miR-146a and COX-2 expression in cancerous and adjacent normal tissue samples obtained from 34 patients with ESCC, using real-time-PCR. Statistical analyses were conducted using one-sample t -test. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve and Kaplan-Meier analysis were applied to assay miR146a as a diagnostic and prognostic marker, respectively, during 4 years of the study. Furthermore, the Cox regression model was performed to assay the hazard ratio (HR). The association between miR-146a and COX2 expression level in ESCC patients was evaluated by nonparametric Spearman's rho analysis., Results: The results revealed a reduction of miR-146a expression in 50% of cancerous tissue when compared with adjacent normal regions ( P- value=0.127). COX-2 expression in 80% of ESCC patients was higher than in the controls ( P- value=0.001). Overall, in 60% of cases, direct association was seen between microRNA-146a and COX-2 expression level (correlation coefficient= 0.438, P- value=0.011). COX2 can be considered as a diagnostic biomarker (AUC=0.834, sensitivity=72%, specificity =83%, P -value<0.0001) but miR146a cannot be considered as a diagnostic biomarker (AUC=0.553, sensitivity=88%, specificity =28%, P -value=0.453). Survival analysis by Kaplan-Meier method showed miR146a and COX2 expression can be probably considered as prognostic biomarkers for ESCC because patients with high expression of miR146a had 7 months shorter life span and patients with low expression of COX2 had 8 months shorter life span., Conclusion: COX2 expression is a diagnostic biomarker. MiR-146a and COX2 expression can probably be considered as prognostic biomarkers for survival in ESCC., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© 2020 Sadegh Shesh Poli et al.)