The association between abnormal microRNA-10b expression and cancer risk: a meta-analysis

Several studies have investigated the association between abnormal microRNA-10b expression and the risk of various developing cancers, but the results are inconsistent. We searched all publications addressing the level of microRNA-10b expression in cancer cases and noncancerous controls (Accessed: August 2014). Thirty-six studies on 14 types of cancer were included. Among them, 25 studies were subjected to the meta-analysis with a vote-counting strategy, 13 studies were estimated using odds ratio (OR) and diagnostic accuracy, and 2 studies were assessed by both methods. It was found that vestibular schwannomas ranked first among the reported cancer types with up-regulated microRNA-10b expression; melanoma ranked first among the reported cancer types with down-regulated microRNA-10b expression; while breast cancer and hepatocellular cancer presented inconsistent microRNA-10b regulation. Of 13 included studies calculated for OR and diagnostic accuracy, it was shown that high-expression of microRNA-10b could be significantly associated with cancer risk (OR = 32.80, 95% CI: 11.90–90.37, P<0.0001), and the area under the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve for microRNA-10b high-expression in the diagnosis of cancer is 0.81, which suggested that high-expression of microRNA-10b can predict worse outcomes in some types of cancer and the regular monitoring of miR-10b expression might be useful in the clinical practice.