Abstract:Objective To investigate the expression and clinical significance of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and exosomes in peripheral blood of patients with breast cancer. Methods Peripheral blood of 87 patients with breast cancer, 40 patients with benign breast tumor and 20 healthy controls were collected. CTCs in peripheral blood were detected by Cell search system. The expression of microRNA-1246 was detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Results The number of CTCs in peripheral blood of breast cancer patients was (4.36?±?1.08) /ml, which was higher than that of benign breast cancer patients and healthy control group (P?0.05). The relative expression level of miR-1246 in peripheral blood of breast cancer patients (102.94?±?43.28) was higher than that of benign breast cancer patients and healthy control group (P?0.05). The coincidence rate of CTCs in diagnosis of breast cancer in peripheral blood (68.9%) was higher than that of microRNA-1246 (63.2%) (P?>?0.05); the coincidence rate of CTCs combined with microRNA-1246 in diagnosis of breast cancer was 81.6%. There was significant difference among the three methods (P?0.05). According to the gold standard of pathological biopsy, the consistency of blood CTCs and miR-1246 in diagnosis of breast cancer was evaluated by Kappa test. The κ values were < 0.4, indicating poor consistency. The κ value of peripheral blood CTCs combined with miR-1246 in diagnosis of breast cancer was 0.46, indicating good consistency. Conclusions The combined detection of CTCs and microRNA-1246 in peripheral blood is helpful for early detection of breast cancer and provides a direction for individualized detection and treatment of breast cancer.