High expression of long non-coding RNA NEAT1 indicates poor prognosis of human cancer

The nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (NEAT1) is a long non-coding RNA. Many studies have reported that NEAT1 plays critical oncogenic roles and facilitates tumorigenesis of various human cancers. High NEAT1 expression is associated with a poor prognosis in cancer patients. This meta-analysis was conducted to assess the association between NEAT1 levels and survival times of cancer patients. Overall survival (OS) was the primary endpoint. Thirteen publications with 1,496 cancer patients from 5 databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Wiley Online Library, and Medline) met the criteria for this meta-analysis. Results of the analysis showed that NEAT1 expression in human cancer was significantly associated with OS (hazard ratio [HR]=1.53, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.39-1.68), including digestive system tumor (HR=1.54, 95% CI: 1.37-1.73) and respiratory carcinomas (HR=1.44, 95% CI: 1.11-1.85). The results also indicated that NEAT1 expression was highly associated with tumor size (>3 cm vs. ≤3 cm; odds ratio [OR]=2.51, 95% CI: 1.27-4.99; p=0.009), TNM stage (III+IV vs. I+II; OR=4.17, 95% CI: 2.42-7.18; p=0.00001), and distant metastasis (OR=2.73, 95% CI: 1.28-5.79; p=0.01). However, there was no significant association with differentiation (poor vs. well + moderate, OR=1.45, 95% CI: 0.72-2.91) and lymph node metastasis (OR=1.39, 95% CI: 0.54-3.60). This meta-analysis showed that NEAT1 expression may be a useful biomarker for predicting a poor prognosis in patients with cancer.