Prognostic value of LncRNA-HOTAIR for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: a meta-analysis.

Objective: This study aims at evaluating the prognostic value of LncRNA-HOTAIR for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Materials And Methods: A comprehensive databases and literature search was performed on PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, CNKI, CBM, Wanfang, and VIP database up to the end of February 2022, for published studies on the connection of HCC and HOTAIR. STATA 12.0 software was used for the meta-analysis.

Results: Eight studies with 412 patients were selected to be entered in the meta-analysis. We found that high expression of HOTAIR was associated with III+IV tumor stage (HR=2.31, 95% CI:1.32, 4.01), and it was not associated with age (HR=0.86, 95% CI:0.55, 1.34), gender (HR=0.91, 95% CI:0.55, 1.46), tumor number (HR=1.58, 95% CI:0.72, 3.48), tumor size (HR=1.54, 95% CI:0.96, 2.49), lymph node metastasis (HR=0.66, 95% CI:0.38, 1.15), AFP (HR=0.81, 95% CI:0.46, 1.42), cirrhosis (HR=1.34, 95% CI:0.75, 2.41), or portal invasion (HR=1.76, 95% CI:0.83, 3.72). A high expression level of HOTAIR was associated with a poorer OS (HR=3.12, 95% CI:1.31-7.43, p=0.010) and RFS (HR=1.67, 95% CI:1.23-2.26, p=0.010) for patients with HCC.

Conclusions: A high expression level of HOTAIR was associated with III+IV tumor stage. Our meta-analysis clearly supports the prognostic value of HOTAIR to predict unfavorable prognostic outcomes for patients with HCC.