Background: Recently, increased expression of TET1 has been shown to inhibit tumor development in many studies. Therefore, a meta-analysis was conducted to assess the prognostic role of TET1 in solid tumors.
Methods: PubMed, Embase, and the Web of Science (last updated on June 13, 2019) were searched and 16 eligible studies involving 3100 patients were eventually taken forward into the meta-analysis.
Results: Pooled results indicated that higher TET1 expression in cancer tissues was associated with improved overall survival (OS) [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.736, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 0.542-0.998, P = .049]. In the subgroup analysis, higher TET1 expression in respiratory tumors (HR = 0.778, 95% CI = 0.639-0.946, P = .012) and breast cancer in Asian patients (HR = 0.326, 95% CI = 0.199-0.533, P < .001) were significantly associated with better OS. In addition, the association between high TET1 expression and prolonged OS was also statistically significant in the following subgroups; data source from samples (HR = 0.561, 95% CI = 0.384-0.819, P = .003), reported in text (HR = 0.539, 95% CI = 0.312-0.931, P = .027), TET1 protein (HR = 0.635, 95% CI = 0.409-0.984, P = .042), Asians (HR = 0.563, 95% CI = 0.376-0.844, P = .005).
Conclusion: This meta-analysis displays that high expression levels of TET1 in tissues is significantly associated with better survival in patients with solid tumors. This finding can be used as evidence to the tone that TET1 may be a useful target for the treatment of patients with solid tumors in the future.