Abstract
Background Numerous recent studies suggested that overexpression of the long noncoding RNA small nucleolar RNA host gene 12 (SNHG12) exhibited prooncogenic activity in multiple cancers. However, results regarding the prognostic value of SNHG12 in cancers still remained controversial. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis complemented with bioinformatics analysis to elucidate the clinical significance of SNHG12 in cancer patients. Methods PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, and Weipu databases were searched for eligible studies until July 2020. Additionally, bioinformatics analysis was applied to verify the results of meta-analysis. Results Twenty-three related studies consisting of 1389 cancer patients were enrolled in the current meta-analysis. Elevated SNHG12 expression was found to be significantly associated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.81; 95% CI: 1.53-2.13; P < 0.001) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR = 1.40; 95% CI: 1.12-1.76; P = 0.004) in multiple cancers, which were also verified by the results of bioinformatics analysis. Moreover, overexpression of SNHG12 was also related to clinicopathological characteristics including LNM, distant metastasis, high clinical stage, large tumor size, and poor tumor differentiation in diverse types of cancers. Conclusion The present findings indicated that SNHG12 might act as a novel biomarker for diagnosis or prognosis in human cancers.
Highlights
Cancer is a heterogeneous disease with increasing incidence and mortality worldwide, which is considered as a major barrier to increasing life expectancy [1]
Elevated small nucleolar RNA host gene 12 (SNHG12) expression was found to be significantly associated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR = 1:81; 95% confidence intervals (CIs): 1.53-2.13; P < 0:001) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR = 1:40; 95% CI: 1.12-1.76; P = 0:004) in multiple cancers, which were verified by the results of bioinformatics analysis
The results showed that SNHG12 might be an unfavorable prognosis factor for cancer patients since high SNHG12 expression was strongly related to shorter survival and poor clinical features, which was in accordance with most of the previous findings that SNHG12 exhibits prooncogenic activity in vitro and in vivo experiments
Summary
Cancer is a heterogeneous disease with increasing incidence and mortality worldwide, which is considered as a major barrier to increasing life expectancy [1]. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a class of nonprotein-coding RNAs with >200 nucleotides in length [3], which were previously found to play vital roles in various biological activities, such as genomic regulation and cell cycle regulation [4, 5] During these physiological and/or pathophysiological processes, lncRNAs act as oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes from the functional point of view [6]. Elevated SNHG12 expression was found to be significantly associated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR = 1:81; 95% CI: 1.53-2.13; P < 0:001) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR = 1:40; 95% CI: 1.12-1.76; P = 0:004) in multiple cancers, which were verified by the results of bioinformatics analysis. The present findings indicated that SNHG12 might act as a novel biomarker for diagnosis or prognosis in human cancers
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