Downregulation of LEMD1-AS1 and Its Influences on the Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Immune Infiltrates of Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

Abstract

Previous studies have confirmed long noncoding RNA LEMD1-AS1 (LEMD1-AS1) as a functional factor in several tumors. The present work is aimed at exploring the prognostic and diagnostic values of LEMD1-AS1 in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). We examined the expressions of LEMD1-AS1 in pan-cancer from TCGA microarray datasets and GTEx Project. The expressions of LEMD1-AS1 were detected by qRT-PCR in EOC specimens and normal ovarian specimens from 30 EOC patients. The ${\chi }^2$ test was applied to compare the clinicopathological characteristics of different groups. ROC curves were established to determine the diagnostic values of LEMD1-AS1 in screening EOC tissues. The association of LEMD1-AS1 expression with clinical outcome was determined by the Kaplan-Meier methods and COX assays. A decreased expression of LEMD1-AS1 was observed in EOC tissues compared to matched normal specimens ( $p<0.01$ ). Low LEMD1-AS1 expression could be used to distinguish EOC from adjacent normal specimens. A clinical study revealed that patients with low LEMD1-AS1 expression have a shorter overall survival ( $p=0.035$ ) and progress-free interval ( $p=0.041$ ) than those with high LEMD1-AS1 expression. The Spearman correlation test revealed that LEMD1-AS1 expressions were negatively associated with the expressions of neutrophil and myeloid dendritic cell. Overall, our finding suggested that LEMD1-AS1 may have potential roles as a potential biomarker and/or a therapeutic target in EOC.