Prognostic and Clinicopathological Significance of Long Noncoding RNA GHET1 in Human Solid Tumors: a Meta-Analysis

Gastric carcinoma high expressed transcript 1 (GHET1) is a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) that is aberrantly upregulated in numerous cancers. Here we carried out a systematical meta-analysis to investigate the potential prognostic and clinicopathologic significance of lncRNA GHET1 expression in multiple types of malignant tumors.

A systematic document retrieval of the online databases Embase, PubMed, and CNKI for studies relevant to the connection between lncRNA GHET1 level and clinical result of tumors was conducted (up to May 8, 2019). The aggregated odds rates (ORs)/hazard ratios (HRs) and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the relationship.

Nine hundred twenty carcinoma patients were enrolled from 12 studies in the present study. The results revealed that increased GHET1 expression was obviously related to worse overall survival (OS) (pooled HR = 2.75, 95% CI: 2.18 - 3.45, p < 0.001). Subgroup analysis results indicated that high GHET1 levels present a stronger connection with poor OS in digestive system cancers. In addition, cancer patients with high GHET1 levels are likely to have distant metastasis (DM) (OR = 12.5, 95% CI: 2.31 - 66.67, p = 0.003), lymph node metastasis (LNM) (OR = 4.29, 95% CI: 2.930 - 6.29, p < 0.001), and advanced clinical staging OR = 4.6, 95% CI: 3.33 - 6.34, p < 0.001), but GHET1 expression was not correlated with gender (p = 0.586), age (p = 0.332), tumor differentiation (p = 0.550), or tumor size (p = 0.084).

Overexpression of GHET1 may be a convincing adverse prognostic factor that contributes to the clinical decision-making procedure of cancer treatment.