Oral cancer-associated fibroblasts predict poor survival: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objectives: To perform systematic review and meta-analysis on correlations between cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and the risk of death for patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Subjects And Methods: English literature (1966-2018) was systematically analyzed for studies that immunohistochemically assessed CAF density by alpha-smooth muscle actin and presented 5 year survival rates by Kaplan-Meier plots. Mean age of patients, proportion of male/female patients, and male/female majority (>50% male/female patients) per study were also collected.