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From the Department of Pathology and Cancer Research Institute,* Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul; the Department of Pathology,
National Cancer Center, Goyang, Gyeonggi; and the Department of Diagnostic Pathology,
University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
| Abstract |
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CpG islands are normally protected from DNA methylation,9 but in relation to cancer or aging, they are aberrantly methylated.3,10 The stomach is one of the organs that shows frequent methylation of CpG islands of genes in nonneoplastic epithelial cells.11-13 Many genes have been demonstrated to be methylated in nonneoplastic gastric mucosae, whether in association with gastric cancer or not.11-13 Our previous study has demonstrated that these genes are not methylated in pediatric gastric mucosae, or at a frequency significantly lower than that in gastric mucosae from adults.11 If these methylations are an age-related event, they would be expected to be progressively prominent with age. However, no study has ever displayed plots correlating the methylation frequency of genes in the normal stomach with age.
In our previous study, aberrant promoter CpG island methylation of some genes was a frequent event in nonneoplastic gastric mucosae.11 The methylation status of these genes, in normal gastric mucosae, have not been analyzed in relation to the histological parameters of chronic gastritis. The present study attempted to determine whether the histological parameters of chronic gastritis, as well as aging and gender, affect DNA methylation in nonneoplastic gastric mucosae. The aim of the present study was not to investigate the functional consequences of CpG island hypermethylation events, but to investigate the occurrence of CpG island hypermethylation in chronic gastritis in relation to aging or clinicopathologic variables. We examined 11 genes, whose expressions were frequently silenced by aberrant CpG island methylation in gastric, or other, cancers. The tested genes included those involved in cell-cycle regulation (COX2, p14, p16), signal transduction (RASSF1A), DNA repair or protection (hMLH1, MGMT, and GSTP1), apoptosis (DAP-kinase), and angiogenesis (THBS1), or those related to metastasis and invasion (E-cadherin and TIMP-3). MSP method was used for the analysis of the methylation frequency for the 11 genes, and the findings were correlated with the clinicopathological parameters.
| Materials and Methods |
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DNA Extraction and Bisulfite Modification
Ten histological sections of 20-µm thickness were dewaxed in xylene, with subsequent ethanol treatment. After digestion with proteinase K (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA), the DNA was extracted with phenol/chloroform/isoamyl alcohol, and precipitated in ethanol. The purified DNA was subjected to bisulfite modification, as described by Herman et al15 In brief, 2 µg of genomic DNA and 1 µg of salmon sperm DNA (as a carrier) (Invitrogen) were heated at 97°C for 6 minutes, and then cooled on ice. Fifteen µl of 1 mol/L NaOH was added to 35 µl of the denatured DNA solution, and this mixture was stored at room temperature for 15 minutes. Five hundred fifty µl of bisulfite (0.22 g) (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO) and hydroquinone (0.08 mg) (pH 5.0) (Sigma-Aldrich) was added to the denatured DNA solution, and the mixture incubated at 55°C for 16 hours. After extraction with a JET-SORB gel extraction kit (Genomed, Bad Oeynhausen, Germany), the purified DNA (35 µl) was desulphonated with 15 µl of 1 mol/L NaOH. The modified DNA was precipitated in ethanol, and then resuspended in 50 µl TE buffer [10 mmol/L Tris and 1 mmol/L EDTA (pH 8.0)].
MSP (Methylation-Specific PCR)
The bisulfite-modified DNA (2 µl) was amplified with primers specific for either the methylated, or unmethylated, sequences. The methylated primers were selected because the primer sequences are located in upstream sequences of the genes (around transcription start sites or in the first exon) and the inverse relation between methylation and expression of the gene has been demonstrated in cancer cell or tissues by other studies using these primers. In a preliminary study, nine SNU gastric cancer cell lines were analyzed for the relationship between CpG island methylation and gene expression of the specific gene, using the same primer sets in the present study. The cell lines showed a loss or decrease of mRNA for the genes methylated, and re-expression of the genes after treatment of demethylating agent. The primer sequences of all genes for the methylated and unmethylated forms, and the annealing temperatures, cycle numbers and references, are summarized in Table 1
. PCR was performed in 25-µl reaction volumes, containing 1X PCR buffer [16.6 mmol/L (NH4)2SO4, 67 mmol/L Tris (pH 8.8), 6.7 mmol/L MgCl2, 10 mmol/L ß-mercaptoethanol], deoxynucleotide triphosphates (each at 0.2 mmol/L), primers (10 pmol each) and 1 unit of Taq polymerase. Seven µl of PCR products underwent electrophoresis on 2.5% agarose gel, then visualized under UV illumination using an ethidium bromide stain. Samples showing signals approximately equivalent to that of the size marker (7 ng/µl) were scored as methylated. Samples giving faint positive signals were repeated three times and only those samples with consistent positive signals were scored as methylated. Normal peripheral blood lymphocytes, obtained from patients with no evidence of cancer (n = 20), were used as a control group. Twelve men and 8 women, with a median age of 46 years (range, 23 to 68), were included in this group. The 11 genes were not methylated in the normal peripheral blood lymphocytes.
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All statistical calculations were made using the SPSS software (version 10.0 SPSS, Chicago, IL). Students t-test or analysis of variance test and
2 test were used to compare the numbers of methylated genes, and the frequency of CpG island hypermethylation for the tested genes, respectively, in chronic gastritis by anatomical site, gender, age, and scores of histological parameters of the modified Sydney system (H. pylori, acute inflammation, chronic inflammation, and intestinal metaplasia). Of the collected samples, those from the patients younger than 40 years showed a skewed distribution of intestinal metaplasia, H. pylori, and gender. Pediatric patients showed no intestinal metaplasia at all, and very low frequencies of H. pylori-positivity, whereas young patients (third and fourth decades) showed high frequencies of Helicobacter-positivity and low frequencies of intestinal metaplasia. When the distribution of the scores for each histological parameter was analyzed by decades, for the patients over 40 years of age, the distribution was not skewed for any of the histological parameters and thus, the statistical analysis of the methylation frequency, with respect to histological parameters, was confined to the patients over 40 years of age (n = 169).
| Results |
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| Discussion |
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In addition to exogenous agents, endogenously-produced materials, including reactive oxygen species, are suspected as possible causes for aging-related methylation in the stomach.10,33 Epithelial cell injury, caused by H. pylori, implicates several pathways, with oxygen-radical injury being one.34,35 However, in this study, no difference was noted in the frequencies of CpG island methylation for the genes tested between chronic gastritis with, and without, H. pylori. The present study has a limitation in the evaluation of H. pylori, as the absence of H. pylori in the biopsy materials did not exclude the possibility of the presence of H. pylori in the adjacent sites that were not biopsied, or the previous residence of H. pylori in the same biopsied sites. However, the urea breath test, which was performed on a small proportion of the patients, showed correlation with the results of histological assessment of H. pylori.
The present study has demonstrated a significant difference in the number of genes methylated between male and female patients. The average number of genes methylated was 3.2 and 2.1 in male and female patients, respectively. However, when the numbers of genes methylated was compared in gastric cancers by gender, no difference was noted (data not shown). It is plausible that the gender-difference of the extent of methylation in chronic gastritis may be related to the gender-difference in the incidences of gastric cancers. It is currently unclear why such a gender difference for the extent of methylation exists in chronic gastritis. Larger studies are needed to validate the gender difference in aging-related methylation in nonneoplastic gastric mucosae.
In the present study, a general progressive increase in the numbers of the genes methylated, in relation to aging, was displayed. The fact that gastric cancer occurs in older people and has a high frequency of CpG island methylation, suggests the link of aging and cancer via increase in CpG island methylation. In the present study, a patient-to-patient variation in the extent of DNA methylation existed in the same age group. Among the patients aged over 40 years, 15% showed CpG island methylation at more than 50% of the genes tested. Considering that nonneoplastic gastric mucosae, from patients with gastric cancers, harbor higher levels of CpG island methylation than nonneoplastic gastric mucosae from patients without gastric cancer,12,13 these individuals with higher levels of CpG island methylation are expected to be at increased risk of tumor formation. A prospective study is required to confirm the risk.
The present study has demonstrated that many genes are frequently methylated in chronic gastritis. The methylation detected by MSP might not affect gene expression although MSP analysis using the same primer sets displayed an inverse relationship between methylation and expression of mRNA of the corresponding gene in gastric cancer cell lines and bisulfite-sequencing of MSP products of each of the genes from chronic gastritis samples showed that all of the CpG sites, in between both primers, were also methylated (data not shown). This is because the methylation of the CpG sites along CpG islands might be patchy and incomplete or the methylation detected by MSP might affect only a few cells over 1000 cells in each sample15 and the vast majority of the cells might not harbor the CpG island methylation of the specific gene. The present study just demonstrated the presence of the methylated allele but did not say about the quantitative prevalence of the methylated allele. It is apparent that the occurrence of the methylated alleles of some genes increased with aging or was associated with some clinicopathologic variables (gender, intestinal metaplasia, and chronic inflammation), but it is unknown whether the proportion of the methylated alleles of the genes does so. For the quantitative determination of the methylated allele, microdissection of the epithelial cells and quantitative assay, including Ms-SNuPE36 or MethyLight,37 should be performed.
In conclusion, we have studied chronic gastritis samples, from pediatric to geriatric patients, for the methylation status of the 11 genes using MSP assay, and determined the methylation frequency of the genes as a function of age, and correlated them with the clinicopathologic parameters. We found that aberrant CpG island methylation occurred frequently in chronic gastritis, which showed aging relationship, and that aging-related methylation was gene type-specific; DAP-kinase, E-cadherin, p14, THBS1, and TIMP3 all showed a progressive increase of methylation frequency with aging, whereas COX-2, GSTP1, MGMT, hMLH1, p16, and RASSF1A were rarely methylated, with no aging relationship. Increased numbers of genes methylated were closely associated with male gender, marked chronic inflammation, marked intestinal metaplasia, as well as aging.
| Footnotes |
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Supported by grant no. R022002-000400 from the Basic Research Program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation and by the 2002 BK21 project for Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy, Seoul, Korea.
Accepted for publication July 1, 2003.
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