Prognostic significance of CXCL5 expression in cancer patients: a meta-analysis

Background: CXCL5 is a member of the CXC-type chemokine family, which has been found to play important roles in tumorigenesis and cancer progression. Recent studies have demonstrated that CXCL5 could serve as a potential prognostic biomarker for cancer patients. However, the prognostic value of CXCL5 is still controversial. Methods: We systematically searched PubMed, Embase and Web of Science to obtain all relevant articles investigating the prognostic significance of CXCL5 expression in cancer patients. Hazards ratios (HR) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were pooled to estimate the association between CXCL5 expression levels with survival of cancer patients. Results: A total of 15 eligible studies including 19 cohorts and 5070 patients were enrolled in the current meta-analysis. Our results demonstrated that elevated expression level of CXCL5 was significantly associated with poor overall survival (OS) (pooled HR 1.70; 95% CI 1.36-2.12), progression-free survival (pooled HR 1.65; 95% CI 1.09-2.49) and recurrence-free survival (pooled HR 1.49; 95% CI 1.15-1.93) in cancer patients. However, high or low expression of CXCL5 made no difference in predicting the disease-free survival (pooled HR 0.63; 95% CI 0.11-3.49) of cancer patients. Furthermore, we found that high CXCL5 expression was associated with reduced OS in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (HR 1.91; 95% CI 1.31-2.78) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HR 1.87; 95% CI 1.55-2.27). However, there was no significant association between expression level of CXCL5 with the OS in lung cancer (HR 1.25; 95% CI 0.79-1.99) and colorectal cancer (HR 1.16; 95% CI 0.32-4.22, p = 0.826) in current meta-analysis. Conclusions: In conclusion, our meta-analysis suggested that elevated CXCL5 expression might be an adverse prognostic marker for cancer patients, which could help the clinical decision making process.