Abstract

Vitamin D deficiency and alterations in expression of vitamin D receptor (VDR) are involved in the pathogenesis of gastric cancer. In the current study, we assessed expression of VDR and four VDR-associated long non-coding RNAs (SNHG6, SNHG16, LINC00346 and LINC00511) in gastric cancer tissues and their neighboring non-cancerous tissues by means of real time PCR. Expression levels of VDR and SNHG6 were significantly higher in malignant tissues compared with non-malignant tissues (expression ratios: 32.7 and 3.39, P values: 0.04 and < 0.001 respectively). There was no significant difference in expression of other genes between malignant and non-malignant tissues. There was a trend toward association between expression level of VDR and patients' gender (P = .05). Besides, expression of SNHG6 was associated with peritoneal invasion (P = .01). Expression of SNHG6 was significantly higher in patients who had family history of cancer compared with those did not (P = .04). Expression of SNHG16 was lower in samples with peritoneal invasion compared with those did not have peritoneal invasion (P = .04). Finally, expression of VDR was higher in malignant samples of females compared with males (P = .009). Expressions of other genes were not different between subgroups of malignant samples. Expression levels of VDR and SNHG6 could differentiate malignant and non-malignant tissues with diagnostic power of 0.85. The current study demonstrates the role of VDR signaling in gastric cancer.