The role of HER-2/neu expression on the survival of patients with lung cancer: a systematic review of the literature

Abstract

C-erbB-2 prognostic value for survival in patients with lung cancer remains controversial. We performed a systematic review of the literature to clarify its impact. Studies were identified by an electronic search in order to aggregate the survival results, after a methodological assessment using the scale of the European Lung Cancer Working Party. To be eligible, a study had to deal with cerbB-2 assessment in lung cancer patients and to analyse survival according to c-erbB-2 expression. In total, 30 studies were eligible: 24 studies dealt with non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC), five with adenocarcinoma and one study dealt with small-cell carcinoma. In all, 31% of the patients were positive for c-erbB-2. According to c-erbB-2 expression, 13 studies were 'negative' (significant detrimental effect on survival), one 'positive' (significant survival improvement) and 16 not significant. Significant studies had a better subscore relative to analysis and results report than nonsignificant studies. In total, 86% of the significant studies and only 56% of the nonsignificant studies were evaluable for the meta-analysis. This suggests a possible bias in our aggregated results. For NSCLC, the hazard ratio was 1.55 (95% CI: 1.29 -1.86) in favour of tumours that do not express c-erbB-2. In conclusion, the overexpression of c-erbB-2 might be a factor of poor prognosis for survival in NSCLC, but there is a potential bias in favour of the significant studies with an overestimation risk of the magnitude of the true effect of c-erbB-2 overexpression.

A Dimerization Hierarchy in the Transmembrane Domains of the HER Receptor Family

“…The complexity of the mixture behavior affirmed from this study may explain the difficulty and the contradictory results that come from clinical studies with the aim of investigating the correlations between HER expression and prognosis factor for tumor evolution (50).…”

The role of RAS oncogene in survival of patients with lung cancer: a systematic review of the literature with meta-analysis

“…We have used a methodology similar to previous systematic reviews reported by our group about biological prognostic factors in lung cancer (Steels et al, 2001;Delmotte et al, 2002;Meert et al, 2002a, b;Martin et al, 2003;Meert et al, 2003). The absence of a statistically significant difference in quality score between the significant and the nonsignificant publications allowed us to perform a quantitative aggregation (meta-analysis) of the results of the individual trials.…”

Valor clínico-biológico de la concentración citosólica de ácido hialurónico en adenocarcinomas pulmonares CD44v6 positivos

“…Su expresión es mayor en los adenocarcinomas que en los escamosos y no parece jugar un claro papel en la metastatización ni ser un factor pronóstico, si bien algunos grupos han demostrado su interés para definir ciertos subgrupos de riesgo 16,17 . Los últimos estudios demuestran un importante papel de este oncogen en numerosos procesos fisiopatológicos que apoyarían su relevancia en la clínica diaria como un factor definidor de una peor evolución [18][19][20][21] . La proliferación celular constituye una importante variable biológica, pues se relaciona estrechamente, en muchos tumores, con el pronóstico y la respuesta a ciertas terapias.…”