Background: RNA-binding motif protein 3 (RBM3) plays an important role in carcinogenesis and tumor progression. However, the prognostic role of RBM3 in human carcinomas remains controversial. Therefore, we took a meta-analysis to research the association between the overall survival of patients with cancer and the expression of RBM3.
Methods: Systematic literature research identified 17 potentially eligible studies comprising 4976 patients in ten different cancer types. Two researchers independently screened the content and quality of studies and extracted data. Correlations of RBM3 expression and survival were analyzed and the hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated.
Results: In the pooled analysis, overexpression of RBM3 was related to improved overall survival (OS), recurrence-free survival (RFS), and disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with cancer having a pooled HR of 0.61 (HR = 0.61; 95% CI: 0.47-0.69), 0.57 (HR = 0.60; 95% CI: 0.50-0.71) and 0.54 (HR 0.54; 95% CI: 0.38-0.78). Besides, subgroup analysis proved that overexpression of RBM3 was related to improved OS in colorectal cancer (HR = 0.61, 95% CI: 0.43-0.86), melanoma (HR = 0.32, 95% CI: 0.20-0.52), and gastric cancer (HR = 0.51, 95% CI: 0.35-0.73). However, subgroup analysis according to tumor type revealed that overexpression of RBM3 was not related to better OS in breast carcinoma (HR = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.17-0.61).
Conclusions: Our results indicated that RBM3 overexpression was significantly predictive of better prognosis in various human cancers. For certain tumors, overexpression RBM3 might be a marker of improved survival in humans with cancer, except for breast cancer.