Introduction: Many studies recently suggested that Zinc-finger protein X-linked (ZFX) acted as a novel oncoprotein in various malignancies. It was frequently overexpressed in cancerous tissues and the high expression of ZFX may have important clinical value. This meta-analysis aims to investigate the prognostic value of ZFX as a biomarker of solid cancers.
Evidence acquisition: We search for multiple databases, including Pubmed, Springer, Web of Science, CNKI from 1996 to Sep. 1, 2016. Eligible articles were collected to explore the association between the expression levels of ZFX and overall survival (OS).
Evidence synthesis: There were totally 933 cancer patients from eight studies. The pooled results indicated that cancer patients with high ZFX expression have shorter overall survival times (HR=2.26, 95%CI:1.77-2.75, P=0.000) than those with low ZFX expression. Statistical significance was also observed in subgroup meta-analysis stratified in the sampling object and cancer type.
Conclusions: High expression of ZFX correlated with poor clinical outcome, ZFX might be sever as a potential prognostic biomarker in various cancers, especially for colorectal cancer.