Clinicopathological and prognostic significance of survivin expression in renal cancer patients: a meta-analysis

Survivin has been reported to play a role in the diagnosis and prognosis of renal cell carcinoma (RCC); however, published data on this subject are conflicting.

To conduct a meta-analysis to evaluate the impact of survivin as a prognostic marker and its association with clinicopathological variables in patients with RCC.

Comprehensive searches of electronic databases (PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge Embase, Google Scholar Web and the Cochrane Library) were updated to June 2016 to retrieve eligible studies. The association strength was measured with relative risks (RRs) and pooled HRs with 95% CIs, which were extracted and pooled to determine the association between survivin expression and patient survival and clinicopathological features.

Ten studies with 1063 cases of RCC were included. Positive survivin expression in RCC was associated with the TNM stage (pooled RR 1.49; 95% CI 1.07 to 2.07) or Fuhrman grade (pooled RR 1.63; 95% CI 1.15 to 2.32) in patients. The correlation between survivin expression and gender was not significant (pooled RR 0.97; 95% CI 0.83 to 1.15). In addition, a considerable association was found between survivin expression and overall survival for patients with RCC (pooled HR 1.94; 95% CI 1.24 to 3.05 (multivariate model) and 5.41; 95% CI 4.08 to 7.17 (univariate model)).

Our results indicate that survivin is of prognostic significance in patients with RCC.

Postgraduate medical journal. 2016 Aug 03 [Epub ahead of print]

Chengquan Ma, Bingxin Lu, Erlin Sun

Department of Urology, The Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China., Department of Urology, Tianjin Nankai hospital, Tianjin, China., Tianjin institute of Urology, The Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China.