The prognostic roles of long non-coding RNA SNHG17 in the patients with gastric cancer.

OBJECTIVE

Dysregulated long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) might exert critical roles in pathways associated with gastric cancer (GC) development. Long non-coding RNA (SNHG17), a newly identified lncRNA, has been reported to be dysregulated in several tumors. Our present study aimed to explore the expression level of SNHG17 in patients with GC and investigate the relationship between the SNHG17 level and the prognosis of GC patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

The expression levels of SNHG17 were detected by Real-time-quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR). The chi-square test was performed to investigate the associations between SNHG17 expression and the clinical features of GC patients. The prognostic value of SNHG17 was demonstrated using Kaplan-Meier method and multivariate Cox regression analysis.

RESULTS

We showed that SNHG17 was significantly up-regulated in GC tissues compared with adjacent normal gastric tissues (p<0.01) and higher expression of SNHG17 was observed in advanced GC tissues. The results by analyzing the clinicopathological features showed that overexpression of SNHG17 expression was associated with advanced TNM stage (p=0.006), positively lymph node metastasis (p=0.006) and positively distant metastasis p=0.024). Moreover, clinical assays revealed that patients with high SNHG17 expression levels had a significantly shorter overall survival (OS) (p=0.0034) and progression-free survival (PFS) (p=0.0002) than those expressing lower. Finally, multivariate assays showed that SNHG17 was an independent prognostic marker for both OS and PFS of patients with GC.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicated that SNHG17 was a novel molecule involved in GC progression, providing a potential prognostic biomarker for GC patients.