Methylation of Ecadherin gene is Correlated with Increased risk of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: The objective of this study was to estimate the correlation between the E-cadherin (CDH1) promoter méthylation and the risk of nasopharyngeal cancer. Methods: Based on previous online articles for the evaluation the hypermethylated status of CDH1 gene at the promoter region with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, two independent reviewers selected studies through databases on PubMed, Google Scholar from 2001 to 2014. The softwared MedCalc® version 18.11 was applied for calculating pooled odd ratios (ÜR) with levels of data heterogeneity by the fixed and random effects models. Results: Of a total of 99 articles, 12 studies with 508 clinical samples of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients and 282 normal samples were selected in the systematic review for meta-analysis. Overall, the results demonstrated the highly significant association between CDU! promoter méthylation with nasopharyngeal carcinoma under the fixed effects model (OR = 16.1 55, 95% Cl; 8.533 - 30.585, p<0.001). The further subgroup analysis was conducted on types of samples, methods for detecting CDHI méthylation and patient ethnicity. In particularly, theresuhs indicated the frequency of CDHI promoter méthylation was significant higher in nasopharyngeal cancer samples than normal samples in Asia (OR = 15,879; 95% Cl: 7.28 - 34.608, p<0.001), Africa (OR = 10.667; 95% CI: 1.214 - 93.719, p<0.00l) and America (OR - 3.9362; 95% Cl: 0.1779- 87.107, p>0.001). Conclusion: This study proposed the strong association between CDHI promoter méthylation and the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Asia and other populations. Tor this reason, the abnormal méthylation in CDHI gene should be a potential hallmark of prognosis and diagnosis for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.