Is Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number Associated with Clinical Characteristics and Prognosis in Gastric Cancer?

Alterations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) have been studied in various cancers. However, the clinicalvalue of mtDNA copy number (mtCN) alterations in gastric cancer (GC) is poorly understood. In the presentstudy, we investigated whether alterations in mtCNs might be associated with clinicopathological parametersin GC cases. mtCN was measured in 109 patients with GC by quantitative real-time PCR. Then, correlationswith clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed. mtCN was elevated in 64.2% of GC tissues comparedwith paired, adjacent, non-cancerous tissue. However, the observed alterations in mtCN were not associatedwith any clinicopathological characteristics, including age, gender, TN stage, Lauren classification, lymphnode metastasis, and depth of invasion. Moreover, Kaplan-Meier survival curves revealed that mtCN was notsignificantly associated with the survival of GC patients. In this study, we demonstrated that mtCN was not asignificant marker for predicting clinical characteristics or prognosis in GC.