Abstract
BackgroundCancer has been a worldwide health problem with a high risk of morbidity and mortality, however ideal biomarkers for effective screening and diagnosis of cancer patients are still lacking. Small nucleolar RNA host gene 16 (SNHG16) is newly identified lncRNA with abnormal expression in several human malignancies. However, its prognostic value remains controversial. This meta-analysis aimed to synthesize available data to clarify the association between SNHG16 expression levels and clinical prognosis value in multiple cancers.MethodsExtensive literature retrieval was conducted to identify eligible studies, and data regarding SNHG16 expression levels on survival outcomes and clinicopathological features were extracted and pooled for calculation of the hazard ratios (HRs) or odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Forest plots were applied to show the association between SNHG16 expression and survival prognosis. Additionally, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset was screened and extracted for validation of the results in this meta-analysis.ResultsA total of eight studies comprising 568 patients were included in the final meta-analysis according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In the pooled analysis, high SNHG16 expression significantly predicted worse overall survival (OS) in various cancers (HR = 1.87, 95% CI 1.54–2.26, P < 0.001), and recurrence-free survival (RFS) in bladder cancer (HR = 1.68, 95% CI 1.01–2.79, P = 0.045). Meanwhile, stratified analyses revealed that the survival analysis method, tumor type, sample size, and cut-off value did not alter the predictive value of SNHG16 for OS in cancer patients. In addition, compared to the low SNHG16 expression group, patients with high SNHG16 expression were more prone to worse clinicopathological features, such as larger tumor size, advanced clinical stage, lymph node metastasis (LNM) and distant metastasis (DM). Exploration of TCGA dataset further validated that the upregulated SNHG16 expression predicted unfavorable OS and disease-free survival (DFS) in cancer patients.ConclusionsThe present study implicated that aberrant expression of lncRNA SNHG16 was strongly associated with clinical survival outcomes in various cancers, and therefore might serve as a promising biomarker for predicting prognosis of human cancers.
Highlights
Cancer has been a worldwide health problem with a high risk of morbidity and mortality, ideal biomarkers for effective screening and diagnosis of cancer patients are still lacking
Studies for inclusion should meet the following criteria: (a) Small nucleolar RNA host gene 16 (SNHG16) expression level was examined in human cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues; (b) patients were separated into high and low expression groups based on the cut-off value of SNHG16 expression; (c) sufficient data regarding association between SNHG16 expression and survival outcomes or clinicopathological features; and (d) estimated hazard ratios (HRs) or odds ratios (ORs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for survival outcomes could be extracted directly or indirectly
Afterwards, 81 publications were screened via their titles and abstracts, and 58 studies were further excluded since they were case reports, reviews, meeting abstracts, or irrelevant topics
Summary
Cancer has been a worldwide health problem with a high risk of morbidity and mortality, ideal biomarkers for effective screening and diagnosis of cancer patients are still lacking. This meta-analysis aimed to synthesize available data to clarify the association between SNHG16 expression levels and clinical prognosis value in multiple cancers. Cancer has become one of the most prevalent causes of mortality worldwide [1]. There has been a dramatic improvement in modern treatments for cancer including surgery, adjuvant therapy and supportive therapy [2,3,4]. It has been well established that early diagnosis and treatment of cancer could greatly reduce its mortality. There is an urgent need to find new biological targets in the carcinogenesis of tumors
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