Title: High expression of long non-coding RNA NEAT1 indicates poor prognosis of human cancer
Abstract: // Jian Fang 1 , Fuhao Qiao 1 , Jingjing Tu 1 , Jinfeng Xu 1 , Fangfang Ding 1 , Yun Liu 1 , Bufugdi Andreas Akuo 1 , Jianpeng Hu 2 and Shihe Shao 1 1 Department of Pathogenic Biology, School of Medicine, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu 212013, China 2 Department of Urinary Surgery, Zhenjiang First People's Hospital, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu 212013, China Correspondence to: Shihe Shao, email: [email protected] Keywords: NEAT1, cancer, OS, meta-analysis, poor prognosis Received: September 07, 2016 Accepted: April 11, 2017 Published: April 26, 2017 ABSTRACT The nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (NEAT1) is a long non-coding RNA. Many studies have reported that NEAT1 plays critical oncogenic roles and facilitates tumorigenesis of various human cancers. High NEAT1 expression is associated with a poor prognosis in cancer patients. This meta-analysis was conducted to assess the association between NEAT1 levels and survival times of cancer patients. Overall survival (OS) was the primary endpoint. Thirteen publications with 1,496 cancer patients from 5 databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Wiley Online Library, and Medline) met the criteria for this meta-analysis. Results of the analysis showed that NEAT1 expression in human cancer was significantly associated with OS (hazard ratio [HR]=1.53, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.39–1.68), including digestive system tumor (HR=1.54, 95% CI: 1.37–1.73) and respiratory carcinomas (HR=1.44, 95% CI: 1.11–1.85). The results also indicated that NEAT1 expression was highly associated with tumor size (>3 cm vs. ≤3 cm; odds ratio [OR]=2.51, 95% CI: 1.27–4.99; p =0.009), TNM stage (III+IV vs. I+II; OR=4.17, 95% CI: 2.42–7.18; p =0.00001), and distant metastasis (OR=2.73, 95% CI: 1.28–5.79; p =0.01). However, there was no significant association with differentiation (poor vs. well + moderate, OR=1.45, 95% CI: 0.72–2.91) and lymph node metastasis (OR=1.39, 95% CI: 0.54–3.60). This meta-analysis showed that NEAT1 expression may be a useful biomarker for predicting a poor prognosis in patients with cancer.