Correlation between miR-200 Family Overexpression and Cancer Prognosis

The correlation between miR-200 family overexpression and cancer prognosis remains controversial. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis by searching PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, China Biology Medicine disc (CBM), and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) to identify eligible studies. Hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to evaluate the strength of the correlations. Additionally, different subgroup analyses and publication bias test were performed. Eventually, we analyzed 23 articles that included five tumor types and 3038 patients. Consequently, high expression of miR-200 family in various tumors was associated with unfavorable overall survival (OS) in both univariate (HR = 1.32, 95% CI: 1.14-1.54, P < 0.001) and multivariate (HR = 1.32, 95% CI: 1.16-1.49, P < 0.001) analyses. Likewise, a similar result was found in different subgroups of the patient source, cancer type, test method, sample source, miR-200 component, and sample size. However, no association of miR-200 family was detected with recurrence- or relapse-free survival (RFS) (univariate: HR = 1.02, 95% CI: 0.96-1.09, P = 0.47; multivariate: HR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.00-1.14, P = 0.07), progression-free survival (PFS) (univariate: HR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.54-1.70, P = 0.88; multivariate: HR = 1.17, 95% CI: 0.86-1.61, P = 0.32), and disease-free survival (DFS) (univariate: HR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.74-1.09, P = 0.29; multivariate: HR = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.68-1.41, P = 0.90). Our findings have provided convincing evidence that miR-200 family overexpression suggested poor prognosis of various cancer types, which efforts may raise the potential use of miR-200 family for cancer prognosis in clinical practice.