Abstract: Objective To detect the expression levels of long non-coding RNA BSN-AS2 (lncRNA BSN-AS2) and hsa-miR-4782-3p in serum of patients with liver cancer,and to analyze their clinical diagnostic value in liver cancer.Methods A total of 100 patients with liver cancer who were diagnosed and treated in our hospital from March 2018 to March 2020 were taken as the research group.Another 90 healthy subjects who underwent physical examination were included as the control group.Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was applied to detect the expression levels of lncRNA BSN-AS2 and hsa-miR-4782-3p in serum of patients;Spearman rank correlation was applied to analyze the correlation between the expression of lncRNA BSN-AS2 and hsa-miR-4782-3p in serum,meantime,the relationship between the two and clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed;receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to analyze the diagnostic efficacy of serum lncRNA BSN-AS2 and hsa-miR-4782-3p expression levels for liver cancer. Results The results of qRT-PCR showed that the expression level of serum lncRNA BSN-AS2 in the study group (2.02±0.59) was obviously higher than that in the control group (1.05±0.25),the expression level of serum hsa-miR-4782-3p in the study group (0.69±0.15) was obviously lower than that in the control group (1.08±0.29) (P<0.05).The expression levels of serum lncRNA BSN-AS2 and hsa-miR-4782-3p were related to TNM staging, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and degree of differentiation (P<0.05).Spearman rank correlation analysis showed that serum lncRNA BSN-AS2 was negatively correlated with the expression of hsa-miR-4782-3p in patients with liver cancer (r=-0.536,P<0.05).The AUC of serum lncRNA BSN-AS2 and hsa-miR-4782-3 alone and in combination for diagnosing liver cancer was 0.890,0.856 and 0.937,respectively,the sensitivity was 87.00%,93.00% and 86.00%,and the specificity was 78.89%,70.00%and 92.22%,respectively;the combination of the two was better than the prediction of lncRNA BSN-AS2 and hsa-miR-4782-3p,respectively (the combination of the two-lncRNA BSN-AS-=2.481,P=0.013the combination of the two-hsa-miR-4782-3P= 3.503,P=0.001).Conclusion The expression level of serum lncRNA BSN-AS2 in patients with liver cancer is obviously increased,and the level of hsa-miR-4782-3p is obviously decreased,both can be used as potential molecular markers for the diagnosis of liver cancer.

Key words: liver cancer, long non-coding RNA BSN-AS2, hsa-miR-4782-3p, clinical diagnosis