High expression of CMTM6 is a risk factor for poor prognosis of gastrointestinal tumors: A meta-analysis

Previous research on the link between CMTM6 expression dysregulation and tumor prognosis has been conflicting. In this study, the predictive effect of CMTM6 in malignant tumors was carefully evaluated using meta-analysis. The literature on the relationship between CMTM6 expression level and malignant tumor prognosis was searched in PubMed, Medline, Embase, and Web of Science databases until April 2021. Data were extracted from eligible studies and analyzed using RevMan5.3 and STATA 12.0 software. The HR and 95%CI were used to analyze the link between CMTM6 expression and OS. And the correlation between CMTM6 expression and clinicopathological features LNM and DM was evaluated by OR and 95%CI. Literature screening eventually included 12 studies involving 2133 patients with malignant tumors. High CMTM6 expression was found to be strongly linked with shorter OS and PFS in cancer patients (HR = 1.84,95%CI: 1.28-2.63, P = 0.001). High CMTM6 expression in gastrointestinal cancers was found to be significantly related with a shorter OS (HR = 2.21, 95%CI: 1.75-2.78, P 0.001). PFS was observed to be related with high CMTM6 expression in cancer patients (HR = 2.029, 95%CI: 1.263-3.26, P = 0.003). Meanwhile, high CMTM6 expression was highly associated to LNM (OR = 1.64, 95%CI: 1.02-2.64, P = 0.043) and DM (OR = 4.07, 95%CI: 1.73-9.56, P = 0.001). However, the expression level of CMTM6 in non-gastrointestinal tumors was not statistically significant with OS or LNM. High CMTM6 expression in gastrointestinal cancers is linked to shorter OS and PFS, as well as LNM and DM, suggesting that high CMTM6 expression could be employed as a new diagnosis for poor prognosis and metastasis.