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 Ecadherin (CDH1) promoter methylation 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 software MedCalc® version 18.11 was applied for calculating pooled odd ratios (OR) 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 CDH1 promoter methylation with nasopharyngeal carcinoma under the fixed effects model (OR = 16.155, 95% CI: 8.533 - 30.585, p<0.001). The further subgroup analysis was conducted on types of samples, methods for detecting CDH1 methylation and patient ethnicity. In particularly, the results indicated the frequency of CDH1 promoter methylation was significant higher in nasopharyngeal cancer samples than normal samples in Asia (OR = 15.879; 95% CI: 7.28 - 34.608, p<0.001), Africa (OR = 10.667; 95% CI: 1.214 - 93.719, p<0.001) and America (OR = 3.9362; 95% CI: 0.1779 - 87.107, p>0.001). Conclusion: This study proposed the strong association between CDH1 promoter methylation and the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Asia and other populations. For this reason, the abnormal methylation in CDH1 gene should be a potential hallmark of prognosis and diagnosis for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.