Prognostic and clinicopathological significance of S100A14 expression in cancer patients: A meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: The prognostic significance of S100A14 for survival of cancer patients remains controversial. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to explore the association between S100A14 expression and cancer prognosis. METHOD: Eligible studies were identified by searching the online databases Pubmed and EMBASE up to August 2018. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) severed as the summarized statistics for clinicopathological assessments and hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% CIs were calculated to clarify the correlation between S100A14 expression and prognosis of different cancers. RESULTS: A total of 11 studies with 1651 cancer patients were enrolled. The results indicated that S100A14 expression was not significantly associated with overall survival (OS) in total various cancers (HR = 1.54, 95% CI:0.89–2.67, P = .121). Further subgroup analysis stratified by tumor type showed that elevated S100A14 expression was associated with poor OS in breast cancer (HR = 3.66, 95% CI: 1.75–7.62, P < .001) and in ovarian cancer patients (HR = 3.78, 95%CI: 1.63–8.73, P = .002). Interestingly, high S100A14 expression was correlated with poor tumor differentiation (OR = 2.51, 95% CI: 1.52–4.13, P < .001). However, there were no significant correlations between S100A14 expression and other clinicopathologic characteristics. Begg funnel plot and Egger test showed that no publication bias was detected. CONCLUSIONS: Our meta-analysis suggests that S100A14 overexpression might be a predictive biomarker for poor prognosis in patients with breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Large-scale studies are required to confirm these results.