Clinicopathological and prognostic value of S100A4 expression in non-small cell lung cancer: a meta-analysis

Numerous published studies have shown that S100A4 is frequently overexpressed in various human cancers. However, the association between S100A4 expression and prognosis or clinicopathological parameters in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains unclear. Therefore, a meta-analysis was performed to identify the significance of S100A4 in NSCLC.

Systematic literature search was conducted using PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure database (CNKI), and the Wanfang database to obtain relevant articles. A combined hazard ratio (HR) and its corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to evaluate the association between S100A4 expression and prognosis in NSCLC patients. Pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% CI were calculated to assess the association between S100A4 expression and clinicopathological features in NSCLC.

NSCLC patients with overexpression of S100A4 had a worse prognosis than patients with low expression of S100A4 (HR = 1.77, 95% CI: 1.55-2.02, P<0.001). Additionally, overexpression of S100A4 was significantly correlated to patients' age (OR = 0.67, 95% CI: 0.49-0.91, P=0.010), tumor differentiation (OR = 2.20, 95% CI: 1.69-2.85, P<0.001), lymph node metastasis (LNM) (OR = 3.70, 95% CI: 2.25-6.06, P<0.001), Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM) stage (OR = 3.08, 95% CI: 2.10-4.53, P<0.001), and pathological subtype (OR = 1.77, 95% CI: 1.09-2.88, P=0.020). However, there was no association between S100A4 expression and other clinicopathological features in NSCLC, including gender, tumor size, and smoking.

S100A4 overexpression was associated with tumor progression and poor prognosis in NSCLC patients. Hence, S100A4 might serve as a potential prognostic biomarker in NSCLC.