Upregulation of long noncoding RNA SNHG1 indicates a poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer

It is indicated that the dysregulation of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) is implicated in cancer progression. However, the clinical significance of lncRNA small nucleolar RNA host gene 1 (SNHG1) in gastric cancer remains elusive. The expression levels of SNHGs and the association of SNHG1/10/11 with the clinical characteristics in patients with gastric cancer were analyzed by The Cancer Genome Atlas RNA-seq data. A Cox proportional hazard regression model was used to evaluate the association of SNHG1/10/11 expression with the clinical outcomes in patients with gastric cancer. It was demonstrated that SNHG1/10/11 expression levels were dramatically elevated in gastric cancer tissue samples as compared with the adjacent normal tissues. Increased expression of SNHG1 had no correlation with the clinicopathological parameters, but acted as an independent prognostic factor of poor survival (hazard ration (HR) = 0.590, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.399–0.872, P = 0.008) and tumor recurrence (HR = 2.457, 95% CI = 1.442–4.186, P = 0.001) in patients with gastric cancer. In addition, knockdown of SNHG1 in vitro inhibited the proliferation and invasion of gastric cancer cells. Our findings showed that the upregulation of lncRNA SNHG1 indicated a poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer and might offer a promising therapeutic target for gastric cancer.