Clinicopathological and prognostic significance of maspin expression in resected non-small cell lung cancer: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Objective To explore the association of maspin expression with clinical pathological parameters and prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received the surgical therapy. Methods The EMBASE, Web of Science and PubMed were searched to identify eligible studies to 3 June, 2019. The correlation of maspin expression with clinicopathological characteristics and survival of resected NSCLC patients was assessed by the combined relative risk (RR) and hazard ratio (HR) with corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI), respectively. All statistical analyses were performed via the Stata 12.0 software. Results A total of 12 articles involving 1771 patients were included. The results manifested that maspin was more prevalent in lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) (RR=0.36, 95% CI: 0.22-0.60, P <0.001) and significantly associated with P53 expression (RR=1.50, 95% CI: 1.00-2.24, P =0.048), while no significant correlation of maspin with other clinicopathological parameters such as the gender, age, tumor size, lymph node metastasis, tumor node metastasis (TNM) stage or differentiation status was observed. As for the prognosis representing as overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS), only significant association between maspin and CSS (HR=1.58, 95% CI: 1.16-2.15, P =0.003) was revealed. However, the subgroup analysis for OS based on the histology demonstrated that maspin expression was an unfavourable and favourable prognostic indicator in lung adenocarcinoma (HR=3.36, 95% CI: 1.44-7.87, P =0.005) and SCC (HR=0.44, 95% CI: 0.27-0.71, P =0.001), respectively. Conclusion Maspin expression was correlated with histology type and P53 expression, but no certain association of maspin with other clinicopathological characteristics or prognosis was observed in resected NSCLC. More well-designed prospective researches with big samples are still needed to further assess the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of maspin in NSCLC patients undergoing surgical resection.