Prognostic Value of microRNA-224 in Various Cancers: A Meta-analysis

During previous studies, microRNA-224 (miR-224) was frequently investigated and discovered to be of vital significance to prognosis of patients with various cancers. However, its accurate prognostic value has not been estimated worldwide. Herein, we performed meta-analysis to assess its potential predictive value in a variety of human tumors.

Qualified researches were identified up to March 1, 2017 through performing online searches in PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) or progression-free survival (PFS) as a prognosis for various cancers were extracted and calculated, if available. Pooled hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using Stata version 13.0 (StataCorp, College Station, Texas, USA).

22 eligible studies with 3000 patients were ultimately brought into the current meta-analysis. It suggested that high miR-224 expression was significantly associated with poor OS in tissue (HR = 1.43, 95% CI = 1.00-2.03). During multivariate analysis, high miR-224 expression was more significantly associated with OS in tissue (HR = 2.81, 95% CI = 1.91-4.13). Likewise, there were significant associations between tissue miR-224 expression and colorectal cancer (CRC), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and gastric cancer (GC) patients (p <0.05). Nevertheless, there were not significant associations between high tissue miR-224 expression and DFS (HR = 2.15, 95% CI = 0.97-4.79) or PFS (HR = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.53-1.59).

As far as the present researches are concerned, tissue miR-224 has a significantly prognostic value in various cancers, especially in CRC, DLBCL and GC. Due to the complicated pathogenesis of cancers, more large-scale and standard researches are requisite.