Survival Outcome and Clinicopathologicl analysis of Homeobox gene cluster-embedded LncRNAs in Human Cancers: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Objective

The ectopic expression of Homeobox (HOX) gene cluster-embedded long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) have been involved several carcinogenic development and progressions. This meta-analysis aimed to summarize the LncRNAs to validate the functions and the prognostic values in several kinds of cancer.

Methods

The retrospective study was conducted to analyze the association between HOX gene-related LncRNAs and the survival outcomes. Cochran’s Q and I² test were used for calculated heterogeneity, and I² > 50%, P < 0.05 was conformed to the random effect model. Publication bias was indicated by Begg’s and Egger’s test.

Results

Total 15,315 patients extracting from 121 studies focused on assessing the association between LncRNAs and the survival outcomes and 12,110 participants were enrolled to address the clinicopathological features. The results demonstrated that the overexpression of HOX gene cluster-embedded LncRNAs revealed notable association among tumor size (pooled OR = 1.80), lymph node metastasis (LNM) stage (pooled OR = 3.00), tumor node metastasis (TNM) stage (pooled OR = 2.86), histological differentiation (pooled OR = 1.59) and distant metastasis (pooled OR = 2.49). Additionally, the up-regulated LncRNAs predicted a poor prognosis in overall survival (pooled HR = 1.95, 95%CI = 1.86–2.04), and also disclosed worse prognosis among the stratified analysis included HOX clusters, LncRNAs, ethnicity, and tumor classification (pooled HRs >1).

Conclusion

In summary, the findings proved that HOX gene cluster-embedded LncRNAs acted as potential biomarkers for clinical treatment of several tumors and the overexpression might be a candidate hallmark for prognosis outcome.

KEYWORDS:

• Homeobox genes
• lncrna
• prognosis
• malignant tumors
• hotair
• meta-analysis

Acknowlegdement

M.G. and Z.C. screened the original articles; N.L. and S.L. extracted available data; M.S. and Y.W. independently extracted secondary available data; L.T. checked and calibrated data; M.G. and Z.C. analyzed data and drafted out the original manuscript; Z.Y. and B.Z. edited and revised the manuscript; Z.Y. was in charge of project administration and funding supported.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer Disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Data Availability Statement

All the data involving in this study are available from the published research.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81673261)