title: Evaluation of the Role of Circulating Long Non-Coding RNA H19 as a Promising Novel Biomarker in Plasma of Patients with Gastric Cancer.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  H19 is one of the long non-coding RNAs (LncRNA) that is related to the progression of many diseases including cancers. This work was carried out to study the level of the long non-coding RNA; H19, in plasma of patients with gastric cancer (GC) and to assess its significance in their clinical management.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sixty-two participants were enrolled in the present study. The first group included 32 GC patients. The second group was formed of 30 age and sex matched healthy volunteers serving as a control group. Plasma samples were used to assess H19 gene expression using real-time quantitative PCR technique.
  
  
  RESULTS
  H19 expression was up-regulated and closely related to TNM cancer stages in GC patients. Using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, a cutoff level of 0.5 was set for H19 expression to diagnose GC cases achieving a sensitivity of 68.75%, specificity of 56.67%, positive predictive value (PPV) 62.86% and negative predictive value (NPV) 62.96% with an area under the curve (AUC) of 72.4%. Combined use of Carcinoembryonic Antigen (CEA) and H19 level in GC diagnosis was evaluated using ROC curve revealing improvement in performance with an area under the curve of 80.4%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Up-regulation of H19 is closely associated with gastric cancer displaying progressive up-regulation in advanced stages of the disease implementing its role as a potential non-invasive diagnostic biomarker in gastric cancer and as a novel tool in gastric cancer management with better performance achieved on using both CEA and H19 simultaneously.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Pathology Department, Alexandria, Egypt. doaa_hashad2003@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Doaa
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hashad
authors.affiliation: Internal Medicine Department, Alexandria, Egypt.
authors.forename: Amany
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Elbanna
authors.affiliation: Internal Medicine Department, Alexandria, Egypt.
authors.forename: Abeer
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ibrahim
authors.affiliation: Clinical Oncology Department, Alexandria, Egypt.
authors.forename: Gihan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Khedr
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002272:Carcinoembryonic Antigen / Q000235:genetics; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D005820:Genetic Testing; D006801:Humans; D008111:Liver Function Tests; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D062085:RNA, Long Noncoding / Q000097:blood* / Q000235:genetics*; D012372:ROC Curve; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000235:genetics*; D015854:Up-Regulation / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D002272:Carcinoembryonic Antigen; C094335:H19 long non-coding RNA; D062085:RNA, Long Noncoding
keywords: LncRNA-H19-gastric cancer-biomarker