Co-expression profiling of plasma miRNAs and long noncoding RNAs in gastric cancer patients

Abstract Purpose The recent researches indicate that differential non-coding RNAs expression signatures could be associated with the pathogenesis of gastric cancer (GC). However, there are few studies focused on lncRNA-miRNAs co-expression profiling in GC patients. Therefore, in the present study the expression of H19 and MEG3 and their related miRNAs including miR-148a-3p, miR-181a-5p, miR-675-5p and miR-141-3p were determined in the plasma samples of GC patients and controls. Materials and methods This case-control study included 62 GC patients and 40 age- sex matched controls. The non-coding RNA levels were assessed by real-time PCR. Further, using in silico analysis, we identified shared targets of studied miRNAs and performed GC-associated pathway enrichment analysis. Results Our results showed that the H19 level was significantly (P = 0.008) elevated and MEG3 expression was significantly (P = 0.002) down-regulated in GC patients compared to healthy participants. Furthermore, it was revealed that the miR-675-5p level was increased, while miR-141-3p plasma levels were significantly reduced in GC patients (P  Conclusion The results of current study demonstrated that combination of H19, MEG3 and miR-675-5p expression levels could provide a potential diagnostic panel for GC.