Study of p16 promoter methylation in Egyptian colorectal cancer patients

Many tumor-suppressor genes contain CpG islands in their promoter regions which raised the necessity of investigating the role of methylation in silencing these genes. We examined p16 methylation as a potential biomarker in the peripheral blood of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Using methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction method, the methylation status of p16 was investigated in the tumor tissue and blood of 65 CRC patients and blood samples from 70 healthy control individuals. Also, the relationship between p16 methylation level and the clinical-pathological findings in CRC was evaluated. The frequency of blood p16 methylation in CRC cases was significantly higher than in control (P = 0.0001). The sensitivity and specificity of p16 methylation in diagnosing CRC was 55.38% and 98.5%, respectively, with 77.7% diagnostic accuracy. There was significant association between p16 methylation and age, sex, Dukes staging, lymph node involvement, and carcinoembryonic antigen levels. Our study revealed that p16 promoter methylation could be considered as both potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of CRC.