Figure 5

Detection of BART miRNAs in plasmas samples from NPC patients. Presence of ebv-miR-BART7-3p in human plasma samples was assessed by single-mode RT and real time PCR. Clinical and biological characteristics of plasma donors are summarized in Table 2. All five NPC patients had positive EBER-staining on tissue sections from their tumors. Two control patients were bearing non-NPC epithelial tumors: HEP5 (adenocarcinoma of unknown primary) and HEP10 (laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma). Three healthy donors (TBS 1, 2 and 3) were adult EBV-carriers as shown by serological investigations (detection of anti-VCA and -EBNA antibodies). The fourth healthy donor (TBS 4) was an EBV sero-negative adult. Upper panel: example of amplification plots of miR-BART 7-3p and mir-146a for one NPC patient (EXO 22) and one control subject (TBS 2). ΔRn stands for the magnitude of the fluorescence signal generated during the PCR at each time point (with background correction). Lower panel: histogram presenting the 2^-ΔCT values for miR-BART7-3p in the various human plasma samples. These data are representative of two similar experiments. Overall the differences between NPC patients and controls are statistically significant (p = 0.026 by the Mann Whitney test).