Background: Although some recent studies have shown that small nucleolar RNA host gene 6 (SNHG6) was associated with clinical outcomes in malignant tumors, the results remain insufficient and inconsistent. Therefore, we performed this meta-analysis to clarify whether SNHG6 can serve as a prognostic biomarker in cancer.
Methods: We conducted a detailed search of the following online databases for all eligible studies: PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase. A meta-analysis was performed using Stata 12.0 software. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset was further utilized to verify the results.
Results: Compared to corresponding normal tissues, SNHG6 expression was significantly up-regulated in most types of solid tumors. A total of 1,535 patients from eighteen studies were included in this study to investigate the correlation of SNHG6 with overall survival and clinicopathological parameters by pooled hazard ratio (HR) and odds ratio (OR) in cancer. Our results manifested that altered SNHG6 expression was markedly related with worse overall survival (HR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.56 - 2.19, p = 0.000) among tumor patients. Levels of SNHG6 were closely associated with tumor size (OR = 1.95, 95% CI: 1.18 - 3.20, p = 0.009), tumor invasion (OR = 3.22, 95% CI: 2.08 - 4.98, p = 0.000), lymph node metastasis (OR = 2.62, 95% CI: 1.36 - 5.04, p = 0.004), distant metastasis (OR = 5.01 95% CI: 3.11 - 8.09, p = 0.000), and tumor stage (OR = 2.97 95% CI: 2.31 - 3.82, p = 0.000), but not related to histological differentiation (OR = 1.40, 95% CI: 0.77 - 2.52, p = 0.27) in cancer.
Conclusions: High expression level of SNHG6 was correlated with more advanced clinicopathological features and poor prognosis and might be a potential molecular marker for cancer prognosis.