Decreased expression of microRNA-206 correlates with poor clinical outcome in patients with malignant astrocytomas

MicroRNA-206 (miR-206) has been proved to function as a tumor suppressor in several types of human malignant cancers. More recently, it has been demonstrated that the ectopic expression of miR-206 significantly inhibited the proliferation and promoted apoptosis at the early stages in glioma cell U343. In order to investigate the clinical significance of miR-206 expression in human astrocytoma, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis was used to characterize the expression patterns of miR-206 in 108 astrocytoma and 20 normal brain tissues. As the results, the expression levels of miR-206 in astrocytoma tissues were significantly lower than those in normal brain tissues ( P