Association between long non-coding RNA MALAT-1 expression and cancer progression: a meta-analysis

The aim of this meta-analysis is to investigate the relationship between lncRNA MALAT-1 and cancer progression. We collected all the relevant articles by searching the following database: PubMed, Cochrane Library, OVID, Web of Science and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). We calculated the odds ratio (OR) and its corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) to assess the strength of the association by using RevMan5.0. In total, 751 patients from 7 studies were included in this meta-analysis. The subgroup analysis showed that MALAT-1 expression was significantly associated with tumor distant metastasis (Absent subgroup: OR=0.41, 95% CI 0.19-0.91, P=0.03; Present subgroup: OR=2.42, 95% CI 1.09-5.37, P=0.03), but not significantly associated with gender differences (female subgroup: OR=0.86, 95% CI 0.63-1.17, P=0.33; male subgroup: OR=1.17, 95% CI 0.86-1.59, P=0.33), tumor differentiation (Well moderate subgroup: OR=0.79, 95% CI 0.50-1.25, P=0.31; Poor subgroup: OR=1.27, 95% CI 0.80-2.00, P=0.31) and lymphatic metastasis (Absent subgroup: OR=1.09, 95% CI 0.77-1.55, P=0.63; Present subgroup: OR=0.92, 95% CI 0.65-1.30, P=0.63). The results indicated that MALAT-1 could be a potential biomarker for tumor distant metastasis.