Prognostic value of vascular endothelial growth factor expression in women with ovarian cancer: A meta-analysis

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a signal protein which is responsible for angiogenesis through promoting migration and mitosis of endothelial cells. The aim of our study was to investigate the existing evidence about whether VEGF is associated with prognosis of ovarian cancer.

We conducted a meta-analysis of 19 studies (n=1352 patients) that focused on the correlation of VEGF expression with overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and progression-free survival (PFS). Data were synthesized with random or fixed effect hazard ratios (HR). The studies were categorized by author/year, number of patients, FIGO stage, histology, cutoff value for VEGF positivity, methods of detection, types of survival analysis, methods of HR estimation, and HR and their 95% confidence interval (CI).

Combined HR suggested that VEGF positivity was associated with poor OS, but not with DFS and PFS. The HR and 95% CI were: HR=1.66, 1.22-2.00 in OS; 1.85, 0.56-3.15 in DFS; and 1.23, 0.62-1.84 in PFS. Subgroup analysis showed that VEGF was irrelevant with OS in specimens from tissues (HR=1.32, 95% CI: 0.82-1.82) with 95% CI overlapping 1, but could indicate poor prognosis in specimens from serum (HR=2.07, 95% CI: 1.45-2.70) CONCLUSION: The OS of the VEGF-positive group with ovarian cancer was significantly poorer than the VEGF-negative group. However, VEGF positivity seems not to be connected with DFS and PFS.