Segmental chromosome aberrations as a prognostic factor of neuroblastoma: a meta-analysis and systematic review

Segmental chromosome aberrations, defined as presence of aberrations, deletion, or imbalance in the chromosomal arms, have long been considered as a predictor of poor prognosis of patients with neuroblastoma. The objective of this meta-analysis is to quantitively analyze the hazard ratios (HRs) of different whole or segmental chromosome aberrations for overall survival (OS) rate or event-free survival (EFS) rate of patients with neuroblastoma.

Relevant studies about chromosome, neuroblastoma, predictor, prognosis, and survival published from the inception to April 2023 in the databases of PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science were searched, screened, and reviewed. The risk of bias of included articles was assessed using the Quality In Prognosis Studies tool. Basic characteristics, HRs of long term (>3 years) EFS and OS with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of included articles were extracted. A random effects model of DerSimonian-Laird was used to analyze the extracted HRs. For studies that did not report HRs, narrative synthesis was used for summarization.

There were 34 (including 14,356 patients) in 844 searched studies finally included for narrative and quantitative analysis. There were 24 articles rated as low risk of bias and 10 articles rated as moderate. Although the results were inconsistent, the pooled effect of HR for 1p loss was 4.46 (1.88-10.59) for EFS and 2.29 (1.26-4.15) for OS; the pooled effect of HR for 17q gain was 4.81 (3.29-7.04) for EFS and 3.98 (2.11-7.54) for OS; the pooled effect of HR for 11q loss was 2.54 (2.32-3.73) for OS. Results of 1p36 loss, 1p22 loss, 11q23 loss, 11q13-q14 gain, 1q gain, 1q22 gain, 2p gain, 3p loss, 4p loss, 14q loss, 14q32 loss, and other segmental chromosome aberrations were also summarized.

1p loss, 11q loss, and 17q gain were identified as significant independent predictors for long-term OS and EFS of patients with neuroblastoma.