Clinical usefulness of gastric adenocarcinoma predictive long intergenic noncoding RNA in human malignancies: A meta-analysis

Background: Gastric adenocarcinoma predictive long intergenic noncoding RNA (GAPLINC), a newly identified lincRNA, was reported to be aberrantly expressed in several kinds of cancers and played an important role in tumor progression. This study was performed to systematically estimate the prognostic role of GAPLINC expression in cancer patients.

Methods: Several electronic databases, including PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wan Fang databases were searched for potential literature (updated to September 3, 2018). The pooled hazard ratios (HRs), odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated with a fixed effects model using Stata12.0 software.

Results: The pooled results indicated that elevated GAPLINC was significantly related to shorter overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.66, 95%CI: 1.40-1.93, p < 0.001), which was further validated using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset. Furthermore, high GAPLINC expression was correlated with higher tumor grade (OR = 1.91, 95%CI: 1.35-2.70, p < 0.001), positive lymph node metastasis (OR = 2.80, 95%CI: 1.69-4.64, p < 0.001), deeper infiltration depth (OR = 2.44, 95%CI: 1.43-4.17, p = 0.001) and advanced clinical stage (OR = 3.54, 95%CI: 2.13-5.88, p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Our results suggest that elevated GAPLINC was associated with poor clinical outcomes and might serve as a promising prognostic biomarker in cancer survivors.