[Relationship between MTA1 Expression and Prognosis of Chinese Lung Cancer 
Patients: A Meta-analysis]

It has been proven that metastasis associated protein 1 (MTA1) was correlated with tumor invasion and migration and poor prognosis of several malignant carcinomas. The prognostic role of MTA1 expression in lung cancer remained controversial, we performed this meta-analysis to assess the prognostic value of MTA1 expression in lung cancer.

A systematic literature search was conducted to identify eligible studies which dealing with the relationship between MTA1 expression and prognosis of lung cancer in PubMed, Embase, Wanfang databases, China Biology Medicine disc and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The pooled hazard ratio (HR) were used to assess the relationship between MTA1 expression and prognosis of lung cancer. All data were analysed using the Stata 12.0 software.

A total of 712 Chinese lung cancer patients from 8 studies were included in this meta-analysis. There was significant heterogeneity existed in these studies (I2=59.0%, P=0.017), so we used a random effects model to calculate the pooled HR=2.07 (95%CI: 1.42-3.02, P<0.001). At the same time, we observed through stratified analysis by histology that there was no significant heterogeneity in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and the fixed effects model was used to calculate the pooled HR=1.66 (95%CI: 1.27-2.18, P<0.001).

Overexpression of MTA1 could be a marker of poor prognosis in Chinese NSCLC patients, but not in lung cancer or small cell lung cancer. Additional studies with larger samples and well-designed were required to derive the more precise outcome.