Prognostic Value of Long Noncoding RNA SNHG12 in Various Carcinomas: A Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Numerous recent studies suggested that overexpression of the long noncoding RNA small nucleolar RNA host gene 12 (SNHG12) exhibited prooncogenic activity in multiple cancers. However, results regarding the prognostic value of SNHG12 in cancers still remained controversial. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis complemented with bioinformatics analysis to elucidate the clinical significance of SNHG12 in cancer patients. METHODS: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, and Weipu databases were searched for eligible studies until July 2020. Additionally, bioinformatics analysis was applied to verify the results of meta-analysis. RESULTS: Twenty-three related studies consisting of 1389 cancer patients were enrolled in the current meta-analysis. Elevated SNHG12 expression was found to be significantly associated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.81; 95% CI: 1.53-2.13; P < 0.001) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR = 1.40; 95% CI: 1.12-1.76; P = 0.004) in multiple cancers, which were also verified by the results of bioinformatics analysis. Moreover, overexpression of SNHG12 was also related to clinicopathological characteristics including LNM, distant metastasis, high clinical stage, large tumor size, and poor tumor differentiation in diverse types of cancers. CONCLUSION: The present findings indicated that SNHG12 might act as a novel biomarker for diagnosis or prognosis in human cancers.