Expression of long non-coding RNA H19 in serum in patients with acute pancreatitis and its clinical significance

Objective To investigate the expression of the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) H19 in the serum of patients with acute pancreatitis and its clinical significance.Methods A total of 82 patients who were diagnosed with acute pancreatitis in Emergency Department and Department of General Surgery in Shenyang Emergency Center from January 2013 to December 2015 were enrolled, and 20 healthy subjects were enrolled as normal controls.Peripheral blood samples were collected from the patients with acute pancreatitis and healthy subjects, the serum was separated, and RNA was extracted.Real-time PCR was used to measure the expression of lncRNA H19, and the correlation between the expression of H19 and other clinical and pathological parameters was analyzed.The t-test was used for comparison of continuous data between groups, and the chi-square test was used for comparison of categorical data between groups.The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the value of lncRNA H19 in the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis.Results The acute pancreatitis group had a significantly higher H19 expression level in serum than the healthy control group (t=2.364, P=0.020) .The severe acute pancreatitis group had higher expression of lncRNA H19 than the mild acute pancreatitis group (t=2.111, P=0.037) , and the patients with a Balthazar CT grade above grade C had significantly higher relative expression of lncRNA H19 than those with CT grade ≤ C (t=2.312, P=0.022) .The ROC curve showed that H19 measurement helped with the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis with an area under the ROC curve of 0.752 (95% CI:0.636-0.867, P<0.01) .Conclusion Patients with acute pancreatitis have increased expression of lncRNA H19 in serum, and therefore, H19 has certain clinical significance in the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis and the evaluation of disease severity.