Clinicopathological and prognostic value of long noncoding RNA SNHG7 in cancer patients: a meta-analysis

Recent studies have provided evidence that long noncoding RNA SNHG7 is highly expressed and associated with poor clinical outcomes in cancer patients. The meta-analysis is aimed to evaluate the prognostic value of SNHG7 across various cancers.

Eligible studies about prognosis and clinicopathological features of SNHG7 expression in all kinds of tumors were collected by searching the databases of PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library from inception through August 13, 2020. Odds ratios (ORs) and hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) from eligible studies were extracted and pooled to investigate the association between SNHG7 and survival or clinicopathology by STATA 16.0 software.

A total of 13 studies enrolling 1029 cancer patients met the inclusion criteria in this meta-analysis. Based on the results, over-expressed SNHG7 was associated with deeper tumor invasion (OR: 2.76; 95% CI: 1.98-3.86; p: 0.000), earlier lymphatic metastasis (OR: 4.22; 95% CI: 3.04-5.86; p: 0.000), more advanced tumor stage (OR: 3.49; 95% CI: 2.45-4.98; p: 0.000) and poor histologic grade (OR: 2.23; 95% CI: 1.33-3.74; p: 0.002), but not with sex, age, tumor size and distant metastasis. As for prognosis, patients with high expression of SNHG7 were more likely to have shorter overall survival (OS) (HR: 1.64; 95% CI: 1.38-1.94; p: 0.000) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR: 1.37; 95% CI: 1.09-1.71; p: 0.006).

SNHG7 may serve as a novel biomarker in terms of predicting prognosis and clinicopathological characters in various human cancers.