Albertas Dauksa1, Antanas Gulbinas2, Zilvinas Endzinas3, Johannes Oldenburg4, Osman El-Maarri5. 1. Institute for Digestive Research, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania albertas.dauksa@gmail.com osman.elmaarri@ukb.uni-bonn.de. 2. Institute for Digestive Research, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania. 3. Department of Surgery, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania. 4. Institute of Experimental Hematology and Transfusion Medicine, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany. 5. Institute of Experimental Hematology and Transfusion Medicine, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany albertas.dauksa@gmail.com osman.elmaarri@ukb.uni-bonn.de.
Abstract
BACKGROUND/AIM: Recently, a set of studies addressed the question of the prevalence of aberrant methylation in surrogate tissues, such as peripheral blood leukocytes. Toward this aim, we conducted a case-control pilot study to investigate aberrant methylation in leukocytes of gastric cancer patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The SNuPE combined with ion pair reverse phase HPLC (SIRPH method) was used to examine site-specific methylation status at selected CpG sites of the promoter regions of APC, ACIN1, BCL2, CD44, DAPK1, CDKN2A, RARB, TNFRSF10C HS3ST2 and of LINE-1, Alu repeats. RESULTS: We observed that in the patients, tumor suppressor genes were slightly but significantly higher methylated at several CpG sites, while DNA repetitive elements were slightly less methylated compared to controls. This was found to be significantly associated with higher prevalence for gastric cancer. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that larger studies must be carried-out to explore the biological significance and clinical usefulness of leukocyte DNA as non-invasive detection tool for gastric cancer. Copyright
BACKGROUND/AIM: Recently, a set of studies addressed the question of the prevalence of aberrant methylation in surrogate tissues, such as peripheral blood leukocytes. Toward this aim, we conducted a case-control pilot study to investigate aberrant methylation in leukocytes of gastric cancerpatients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The SNuPE combined with ion pair reverse phase HPLC (SIRPH method) was used to examine site-specific methylation status at selected CpG sites of the promoter regions of APC, ACIN1, BCL2, CD44, DAPK1, CDKN2A, RARB, TNFRSF10CHS3ST2 and of LINE-1, Alu repeats. RESULTS: We observed that in the patients, tumor suppressor genes were slightly but significantly higher methylated at several CpG sites, while DNA repetitive elements were slightly less methylated compared to controls. This was found to be significantly associated with higher prevalence for gastric cancer. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that larger studies must be carried-out to explore the biological significance and clinical usefulness of leukocyte DNA as non-invasive detection tool for gastric cancer. Copyright