J Cancer 2018; 9(19):3427-3434. doi:10.7150/jca.26071 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. Department of Internal Medicine, Hallym University Medical Center, Hallym University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
2. Department of Internal Medicine, National Army Capital Hospital, The Armed Forces Medical Command, Sungnam, Gyeonggi-Do, Republic of Korea
3. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Kangnam Sacred-Heart Hospital, Hallym University Medical Center, Hallym University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
* JH Kim and HJ Jang equally contributed to this work.
High c-Met expression has been observed in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). However, its clinicopathological impacts remain controversial. We conducted this meta-analysis to evaluate the pathologic and prognostic significance of c-Met overexpression in patients with EOC. A systematic computerized search of the electronic databases PubMed, PMC, EMBASE, and Google scholar (up to April 2018) was carried out. From seven studies, 568 patients with EOC were included in the meta-analysis. Although there was no statistical significance, EOCs with c-Met overexpression tended to show higher FIGO stage (III-IV) (odds ratio = 2.18, 95% confidence interval: 0.86-5.53, p = 0.10) and higher rate of lymph node metastasis (odds ratio = 3.05, 95% confidence interval: 0.85-10.98, p = 0.09), compared with tumors with low c-Met expression. In terms of prognosis, patients with c-Met-high EOC showed significantly worse survival than those with c-Met-low tumor (hazard ratio = 2.11, 95% confidence interval: 1.51-2.94, p < 0.0001). In conclusion, this meta-analysis indicates that high c-Met expression represents an adverse prognostic marker for patients with EOC.
Keywords: c-Met expression, ovarian cancer, prognosis, meta-analysis, review