Upregulation of tissue long noncoding RNA X inactive specific transcript predicts poor postoperative survival in patients with non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract

X inactive specific transcript (XIST) is a novel long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) which has been reported to be frequently upregulated in various human cancer types and to function as an oncogene. It has been reported that the expression of lncRNA XIST was upregulated in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In the present study, we aimed to investigate the clinical significance and prognostic value of XIST in patients with NSCLC. A total of 156 pairs of NSCLC and corresponding adjacent normal lung tissue samples were obtained from NSCLC patients who had undergone surgery from July 2014 to March 2019. The Student's t test was used in different treated groups for statistical analysis. The association between XIST expression and clinicopathological features of NSCLC patients was evaluated using the chi-squared test. Survival curves were plotted using Kaplan-Meier method and compared by log-rank test. The expression of XIST was significantly higher in NSCLC samples compared to non-cancerous samples (P < .001). Statistically significant correlations were observed between high tissue XIST expression level and lymph node metastasis (P = .036) and high Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) stage (P = .002). The log-rank test indicated that patients with increased XIST expression experienced poor overall survival (P = .006). Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that XIST expression level (hazard ratio = 2.645, 95% confidence interval: 1.672-7.393, P = .029) was an independent factors in predicting the overall survival of NSCLC patients. The present study found that XIST expression level was significantly associated with advanced pathological stage and high TNM stage in NSCLC. Furthermore, upregulation of tissue lncRNA XIST predicts poor postoperative survival in patients with NSCLC.