EFFECT OF MIR-138 EXPRESSION ON CLINICOPATHOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN PATIENTS WITH GASTRIC CANCER

Objective: In this study, the clinical significance of miR-138 was explored by analyzing the effect of miR-138 expression on clinical pathological parameters of gastric cancer patients. Methods: 42 patients with confirmed gastric cancer were selected. The expression of miR-138 in tumor tissues and matched adjacent normal tissues was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR (RT-PCR). The correlation between the expression level of miR-138 and the basic clinicopathological parameters of gastric cancer patients was analyzed. Results: The expression level of miR-138 in the tumor tissues of 42 patients with gastric cancer was significantly lower than that in adjacent normal tissues (P<0.05). The expression of miR-138 was remarkably correlated with TNM stage and with or without lymph node metastasis in patients with gastric cancer (P<0.05). That is, the lower the expression level of miR-138, the later the tumor stage tended to be, and patients with lymph node metastasis had lower miR-138 levels. Conclusion: The expression of miR-138 was down-regulated in gastric cancer, and its expression was closely related to tumor stage and with or without lymph node metastasis in patients with gastric cancer, which indicates that miR-138 has the potential to be a tumor marker in the process of diagnosis, curative effect evaluation and prognosis judgment of gastric cancer.