Prognostic and clinicopathological significance of circular RNA circ-ITCH expression in cancer patients: a meta-analysis

Abstract Background: Circular RNAs are a class of noncoding RNAs, and several members of them have been reported to be capable of regulating various biological processes and predicting the outcome of disease. Among them, circular RNA circ-ITCH has been identified to be aberrantly expressed and associated with disease progression in diverse cancers. However, the relationship between circ-ITCH expression and clinicopathological features, as well as prognosis of cancers, remains inconclusive. Material and methods: Up to April 30th, 2020, relevant articles were searched in PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane library, Embase, CNKI and Wanfang databases. A meta-analysis was performed to investigate the clinical significance of circ-ITCH in cancers by systematically summarizing all eligible literatures. Results: A total of 1 456 patients from 12 studies were included in this meta-analysis. The results showed that cancer patients with low circ-ITCH expression were more susceptible to develop lymph node metastasis (OR=2.26, 95% CI:1.63-3.13, P=0.000), and were associated with larger tumor size (OR=2.69, 95%CI:1.76-4.12, P=0.000), advanced TNM stage (OR=2.57, 95%CI:1.63-4.06, P=0.000), as well as poor overall survival (OS) (HR=2.51, 95%CI:2.09-3.02, P=0.000, univariate analysis; HR=2.69, 95%CI:1.82-3.96, P=0.000, multivariate analysis). Conclusion: Low circ-ITCH expression was significantly associated with aggressive clinicopathological features and unfavorable outcome in various cancers. Therefore, circ-ITCH may serve as a molecular therapy target and a prognostic marker in cancers.