Prognostic and clinicopathological significance of long noncoding RNA HOXA11-AS expression in human solid tumors: a meta-analysis

Background: Recent studies have emphasized the important prognostic role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in various types of cancers. Here we conducted a meta-analysis to investigate whether lncRNA HOXA11-AS can be served as a prognostic biomarker in human cancers. Patients/methods: We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, ISI Web of Science, and SCOPUS for relevant studies, to investigate the prognostic significance of HOXA11-AS expression in cancer patients. Odds ratios (ORs) or hazards ratios (HRs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) are pooled to estimate the association between HOXA11-AS expression and clinicopathological parameters or survival of cancer patients. Results: A total of eight eligible studies with 1320 cancer patients were enrolled in our meta-analysis. The results revealed that increased expression level of HOXA11-AS was significantly associated with clinicopathological parameters including more lymph node metastasis (OR = 2.06, 95% CI 1.31-3.25), advanced tumor stage (OR = 4.22, 95% CI 2.60-6.85), as well as poor tumor differentiation (OR = 2.49, 95 CI 1.47-4.20), but not correlated with age (p = 0.101) or gender (p = 0.845). In addition, cancer patients with high HOXA11-AS are prognosed to have shorter OS (pooled HR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.39-2.48) and PFS (pooled HR = 2.47, 95% CI 1.29-4.75). Conclusions: HOXA11-AS overexpression might be a convinced unfavorable prognostic factor that helps the clinical decision-making process.