Prognostic role of microRNA-181a/b in hematological malignancies: a meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Emerging evidence has shown that miRNAs participate in human carcinogenesis as tumor suppressors or oncogenes, and have prognostic value for patients with cancers. In recent years, the miR-181 family was found dysregulated in a variety of human cancers and significantly associated with clinical outcome of cancerous patients. MiR-181a and miR-181b (miR-181a/b) were the most investigated members in the family. However, the results of miR-181a/b from different studies were inconsistent. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to summarize all the results from available studies, aiming to delineate the prognostic role of miR-181a/b in human cancers.

Methods

The identified articles were retrieved from the two main on-line databases, PubMed and EMBASE. We extracted and estimated the hazard ratios (HRs) for overall survival (OS), which compared the high and low expression levels of miR-181a/b in patients of the available studies. Each individual HR was used to calculate the pooled HR.

Results

Eleven studies of 1252 patients were selected into the final meta-analysis after a strict filtering and qualifying process. Fixed model or random model method was chosen depending on the heterogeneity between the studies. The subgroup analysis showed that high expressed miR-181a/b could prolong OS in patients with hematological malignancies rather than low expression level (HR?=?0.717, P<0.0001). But the expression of miR-181a/b was not significantly relative to OS in patients with various cancers (HR?=?0.861, p?=?0.356).

Conclusion

Our study indicates that the expression level of miR-181a/b is significantly associated with OS in hematological malignancies and can be an important clinical prognostic factor for those patients.

SUBMITTER: Lin S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3606212 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature