Meta-analysis of the Correlation between miRNA Expression in Breast Cancer and Clinicopathological Features and Prognosis.

ABSTRACT

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer for women all over the world. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a type of small endogenous single-stranded RNA that are involved in various cellular processes, including proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, and metabolism. Over the past decade, numerous studies have demonstrated that the expression levels of miRNAs are dysregulated in many types of cancer, including breast cancer. Objective: To systematically evaluate both the diagnostic and prognostic value of miRNA expression in breast cancer by meta-analysis. Design: This was a meta-analysis. The research team performed a comprehensive narrative review by searching Pubmed, Medline, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, and other databases that were searched by computer from January 2010 to December 2020. The language was limited to English; the subject words were miRNA and breast cancer. Setting: This review took place in Jintang First People's Hospital, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, and Jingtang Hospital. Primary Outcome Measures: RevMan 5.3 software was implemented to carry out a meta-analysis of the data extracted in this paper. The outcome measures included (1) patient age, (2) patient tumor size, (3) lymph node metastasis, (4) estrogen receptor (ER) level (5) progesterone receptor (PR) level (6) human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) level (7) tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (8) prognosis disease-free survival (DFS) level (9) overall survival (OS) level. Results: A total of 8 references and 1414 patients were contained in this research. Meta-analysis demonstrated that age odds ratio (OR) =1.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.30-12.09), P=0.50. Tumor size (>2 cm) OR=2.23, 95% CI (0.89-5.57), P = .09. Lymph node metastasis OR=2.09, 95% CI (1.65-2.65), P < .00001. ER OR=1.26, 95% CI (0.64-2.47), P = .5. PR OR=0.96, 95% CI (0.86-1.07), P = .41. HER2 OR=1.79, 95% CI (0.42-7.64), P = .09. TNM stage (III vs. I/II) OR=0.89, 95% CI (0.71-1.10), P = .27. DFS OR=8.49, 95% CI (2.72-26.45), P = .0002. OS OR=5.99, 95% CI (2.60-13.79), P < .0001. High expression of miRNA was correlated with lymph node metastasis, DFS and OS in BC patients. Conclusion: High expression of microRNA can be adopted as an important indicator for BC screening and has important value for the prognosis of BC patients. Circulating miRNAs could serve as potential targets for BC treatment.