Prognostic and clinicopathological role of long non-coding RNA UCA1 in various carcinomas

// Xiaoxiong Wang 1, 2, * , Fei Peng 1, 2, * , Liang Cheng 3, * , Guang Yang 1, 2 , Daming Zhang 1, 2 , Jiaqi Liu 1, 2 , Xin Chen 1, 2 , Shiguang Zhao 1, 2 1 Department of Neurosurgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, 150001, People’s Republic of China 2 Institute of Brain Science, Harbin Medical University, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, 150001, People’s Republic of China 3 College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, 150081, People’s Republic of China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Shiguang Zhao, email: guangsz@hotmail.com Keywords: long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), urothelial cancer associated 1 (UCA1), cancer, prognosis Received: August 10, 2016      Accepted: February 27, 2017      Published: March 09, 2017 ABSTRACT Urothelial cancer associated 1 (UCA1) as an oncogenic long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) was aberrantly upregulated in various solid tumors. Numerous studies have demonstrated overexpression of UCA1 is an unfavorable prognostic indicator in cancer patients. This study aimed to further explore the prognosis role and clinical significance of UCA1 in cancer. Eligible studies were recruited by a systematic search in PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science databases. A total of 19/16 studies with 1587/1291 cancer patients were included to evaluate the association between UCA1 expression and overall survival (OS) and clinicopathological factors of malignancies by computing hazard ratio (HR), odds ratios (OR) and confidence interval (CI). The meta-analysis indicated overexpression of UCA1 was significantly correlated with unexpected OS in patients with cancer (pooled HR = 1.85, 95% CI 1.62–2.10, p < 0.001). There was also a significantly negative association between high level of UCA1 and poor grade cancer (pooled OR = 2.74, 95% CI 2.04–3.70, p < 0.001) and positive lymphatic metastasis (pooled OR = 2.43, 95% CI 1.72–3.41, p < 0.001). In conclusion, our study suggested that UCA1 was correlated with more advanced clinicopathological features and poor prognosis as a novel predictive biomarker of patients with various tumors.