A H. pylori-independent miR-21 overexpression in gastric cancer patients

Abstract

Background: Gastric cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. miR-21 is one of the non-coding RNAs drastically deregulated in gastric cancer. However, the expression of miR-21 and its association with the clinicopathological characteristics of gastric cancer patients has not been studied clearly in Iranian population. Objectives: We aimed to analyze the expression level of miR-21 in a set of fresh gastric cancer specimens and healthy control samples. The expression level of miR-21 was then analyzed to explore for the statistically significant correlations with the clinicopathological features of the samples. Methods: miR-21 expression level was quantitatively studied by RT-qPCR. The association studies between miR-21 expression and the clinical data were performed statistically. Results: miR-21 is highly expressed in gastric cancer patients regardless of H. pylori infection. This phenomenon significantly correlates with lymph node (p = 0.022) and peritoneal (p = 0.023) metastasis, stage I of gastric cancer (p = 0.021), greater curvature tumor location (p = 0.030) and bigger tumor size (p = 0.050) in gastric cancer patients in Iranian population. Conclusion: miR-21 is overexpressed in gastric cancer. This perturbation may not be mediated by H. pylori infection.