Prognostic role of long non-coding RNA HNF1A-AS1 in Chinese cancer patients: a meta-analysis.

Background: Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) play important roles in tumorigenesis and progression. Recent studies have demonstrated that LncRNA HNF1A antisense RNA 1 ( HNF1A-AS1 ) is aberrantly expressed in several types of cancers and is associated with poor outcomes. This meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between HNF1A-AS1 expression and clinical outcomes in cancer patients.

Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wan Fang databases (updated until December 31, 2017) for literature. A total of eight studies with 789 cancer patients were finally included in the present meta-analysis.

Results: The results showed that high expression of HNF1A-AS1 significantly predicted poor overall survival (HR=3.10, 95% CI: 1.58-6.11, P =0.001), which was further validated using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset. Moreover, high HNF1A-AS1 expression was also associated with advanced TNM stage (OR=3.32, 95% CI: 2.28-4.83, P <0.001), lymph node metastasis (OR=3.08, 95% CI: 1.95-4.85, P <0.001), and distant metastasis (OR=5.53, 95% CI: 1.94-15.77, P =0.001).

Conclusion: Our results suggested that elevated HNF1A-AS1 was associated with poor clinical outcomes and might serve as a potential prognostic biomarker of cancer.