Introduction: Recent studies have shown that Caveolin play a potential role as a prognostic biomarker of cancers. The aim of the present study was to clarify whether caveolin could be a prognostic factor for patients with breast cancer.
Materials and methods: All eligible studies were identified using Medline and EMBASE system. The patients' clinical characteristics and survival outcome were extracted. The meta-analysis was performed to clarify the prognostic role of caveolin and the correlation between the caveolin expression and clinical characteristics.
Results: After full text review, 19 articles were identified as eligible articles. We found that negative stromal Caveolin-1 (Cav-1) expression could predict the poor prognosis of breast cancer. The combined HR (95% CI) for OS was 4.12[2.05, 8.28], while the combined HR (95% CI) for DFS/PFS was 3.69[2.57, 5.31]. The combined HR (95% CI) of tumor epithelial Cav-1 for OS was 0.78[0.54, 1.12], and the combined HR (95% CI) for DFS/PFS was 1.32[0.76, 2.29]. The combined HR (95% CI) of tumor epithelial Cav-2 for CSS was 2.04[0.91, 4.56]. Odds ratios (ORs) showed that the stromal Cav-1 expression was associated with the AJCC stage, T status, lymph metastasis, distant metastasis, and histological grade (G grade) and many biomarkers. We found ORs of Cav-1 and Cav-2 expression in tumor epithelial cells varied in clinical characteristics and biomarkers.
Conclusion: Our results indicated that negative expression of stromal Cav-1 was associated with poor prognosis of breast cancer, while the detection of Cav-1 and Cav-2 in tumor epithelial cells was not.
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