ABSTRACT: MicroRNA-196a (miR-196a) was previously reported to be up-regulated in cancers, and it has the diagnostic and prognostic values in cancers. Whereas, the conclusion was still unclear according to the published data. To assess such roles of miR-196a in cancers, the present study was conducted based on published data and online cancer-related databases. To identify the relevant published data, we searched articles in databases and then the relevant data were extracted to evaluate the correlation between miR-196a expression and diagnosis, prognosis for cancer patients. The pooled results showed that miR-196a was a valuable diagnostic biomarker in cancer (area under curve (AUC) = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.84-0.90; sensitivity (SEN) = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.64-0.81; specificity (SPE) = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.81-0.95), which was consistent with the data from databases (breast cancer: miR-196a-3p: AUC = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.74-0.79; miR-196a-5p: AUC = 0.71, 95% CI: 0.66-0.75; pancreatic cancer: miR-196a-3p: AUC = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.73-0.87; miR-196a-5p: AUC = 0.61, 95% CI: 0.51-0.71). In addition, the pooled result revealed that elevated miR-196a expression in tumor tissues (HR = 2.54, 95% CI: 1.79-3.61, PHeterogeneity=0.000, I2 = 75.8%) or serum/plasma (HR = 4.06, 95% CI: 2.67-6.18, PHeterogeneity=0.668, I2 = 0%) of patients was an unfavorable survival biomarker, which was consistent with the data from databases (adrenocortical carcinoma: HR = 5.70; esophageal carcinoma: HR = 1.93; brain lower grade glioma: HR = 2.91; GSE40267: HR = 2.47, 95% CI: 1.2-5.07; TCGA: HR = 1.82, 95% CI: 1.21-2.74; GSE19783: HR = 4.24, 95% CI: 1-18.06). In short, our results demonstrated that miR-196a in tumor tissue or serum/plasma could be used as a prognostic and diagnostic values for cancers.
