Title Page
Contents
Abstract 5
국문초록 7
Abbreviations 11
I. Introduction 12
II. Materials and Methods 16
1. Patients and pleural fluid collection 16
2. RNA extraction and real-time reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) 17
3. Immunoassay for CEA 18
4. Statistical analysis 18
III. Results 19
1. Patient characteristics 19
2. Expression levels of miR-134, miR-185, miR-22, and CEA in BPE and LA-MPE 19
3. Correlation between miRNAs and CEA expression levels 20
4. Diagnostic performance of miR-134, miR-185, miR-22, and CEA for LA-MPE 20
IV. Discussion 32
V. Conclusion 35
VI. References 36
Table 1. Characteristics of the study populations 22
Table 2. Sensitivity, specificity, areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROC) for miR-134, miR-185, miR-22, CEA and combinations of these markers in lung adenocarcinoma-associated malignant pleural effusion 23
Figure 1. Expression levels of U6 small nuclear RNA(snRNA) in the pleural effusion 24
Figure 2. Comparison of (A) miR-134, (B) miR-185, (C) miR-22 expression levels, and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) in benign pleural effusion (BPE) and lung adenocarcinoma-associated malignant pleural effusion (LA-MPE) 25
Figure 3. Correlation between miRNAs' expression and CEA level in pleural effusion 28
Figure 4. Area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve analysis 30