The Expression And Significance Of Circulating Long Noncoding RNA In Patients With Gastric Cancer

Objective To establish a method using quantitative real-time PCR(RT-qPCR)for detecting circulating long non-coding RNA HULC(high up-regulated in liver cancer)and investigate HULC expression in patients with benign and malignant gastric tumors and normal controls,as well as explore its clinical significance of increasing the early complementary diagnosis and monitoring of progression and prognosis of gastric cancer(GC).To evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of combination HULC level with conventional serum markers carcinoembryonic antigen(CEA)and carbohydrate antigen72-4(CA72-4)in GC.Methods Serum samples were collected at random from 173 with GC including 100 primary cases,62 with operated GC,11 with recurrent/metastatic GC,30 patients with gastric polyps and 30 patients with high atypical hyperplasia or intestinal metaplasia who were from the Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University and 110 age-matched normal controls were collected during the same period from the Physical Examination Center of the same hospital.Correlative serum carcinoembryonic antigen(CEA)level and carbohydrate antigen 72-4(CA72-4)were detected by ARCHITECT assay.Results The RT-qPCR-based assay was a reliable method to detect circulating HULC.The levels of HULC were significantly up-regulated in serum of GC patients(P<0.01).A high expression level of serum HULC was significantly correlated with tumor size(P=0.001),lymph node metastasis(P=0.021),distant metastasis(P=0.017),tumor-node-metastasis stage(P=0.002),and H.pylori infection(P=0.046).The area under the ROC curve(AUC)of HULC was up to 0.888,which was higher than that of CEA(0.694)and CA72-4(0.514).Follow-up detection and Kaplan-Meier curve analysis revealed HULC was a good predictor of GC prognosis.Conclusions Our present study indicates that circulating HULC can be detectable in serum and the expression of circulating HULC may provide a novel serum tumor marker for early diagnosis and monitoring progression and prognosis of GC.Combined with traditional protein markers,HULC can improve the efficiency of diagnosis of gastric cancer.