Increased Expression of Lncrna RP11-397A15.4 in Gastric Cancer and Its Clinical Significance.

Background. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been demonstrated to have potential diagnostic and prognostic values for many types of cancers. However, their clinical value in patients with gastric cancer (GC) remains unknown. Methods. The expression levels of lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 in 68 GC tissues and their matched adjacent non-tumor tissues from GC patients and in 24 normal mucosa or those with minimal gastritis (healthy controls) were determined by qRT-PCR. The expression levels of lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 in human GC cell lines and a normal gastric epithelium cell line were also detected by qRT-PCR. The potential associations between lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 expression level in GC tissues and the clinicopathological features of GC patients were analyzed. Moreover, a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed for differentiating patients with gastric cancer from patients with benign gastric diseases. In addition, the correlation between lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 and overall survival (OS) was analyzed. Results. The expression levels of lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 were significantly reduced in GC tissues and cell lines. Increased expression of lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 was associated with tumor differentiation, clinical stage, and distant metastasis. Furthermore, the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was up to 0.9726 (95% CI=0.9492-0.9961, P<0.0001). The correlation between lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 expression and overall survival (OS) was statistically significant. Conclusion. The present study demonstrated that lncRNA RP11-397A15.4 was highly expressed in GC tissues and may serve as a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for GC.