Abstract:
Objective: To investigate the feasibility and significance of detecting promoter hypermethylation in tmor-related genes in gastric cancer. Methods: The tissues and serum from 52 gastric cancer patients were detected for abnormal methylation in hMLH1, E-cadherin, GSTP1, p15, and p16 by methylation-specific PCR (MSP). Serum from 20 age-matched healthy people was adopted as the control. Results: The positive rate of promoter hypermethylation in hMLH1, Ecadherin, GSTP1, p15, and p16 gene were 28.8%, 76.9%, 23.1%, 59.6% and 69.2% in primary tumor tissues, and 13.5%, 38.5%, 15.4%, 25.0% and 30.8% in the serum of gastric cancer patients. Patients with promoter hypermethylation in serum DNA also had promoter hypermethylation in cancer tissues. Overall, 84.7% patients with gastric cancer can be detected with promoter hypermethylation in serum DNA. DNA hypermethylation was not found in the serum of the controls. Conclusion: MSP is a sensitive and specific method to detect gene-promoter methylation in serum. Promoter hypermethylation can be detected in the serum and cancer tissues of most gastric cancer patients. It can be helpful for the diagnosis of gastric cancer.