Background: Numerous studies have reported the prognostic significance of serum apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA-I) in various cancers, but the results have been inconsistent. The current meta-analysis was performed to investigate the association between ApoA-I level and prognosis in human malignancies.
Methods: A literature search was performed using the electronic platforms of the PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase, Wanfang, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases to obtain eligible articles published up to May 20, 2018. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated to assess the prognostic values of the ApoA-I level in cancers using STATA 12.0 software.
Results: A total of 14 studies involving 9295 patients were included. The results indicated that low ApoA-I level was significantly associated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.44-0.61). Significant relationships between the ApoA-I level and OS were specifically detected in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC, HR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.54-0.73), colorectal cancer (CRC, HR = 0.48, 95% CI: 0.19-0.76), and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, HR = 0.46, 95% CI: 0.27-0.65). The subgroup analyses for OS also further confirmed the prognostic significance of the ApoA-I level in cancers. Moreover, lower Apo A-I was associated with unfavorable cancer-specific survival (CSS, HR: 0.47, 95% CI: 0.19-0.76) in cancers, and low ApoA-I level was clearly associated with inferior total time to recurrence (TTR, HR: 0.43, 95% CI: 0.29-0.58) in HCC, poorer locoregional recurrence-free survival (LRFS) and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) (HR: 0.58, 95% CI: 0.42-0.74 for LRFS; HR: 0.65, 95% CI: 0.41-0.89 for DMFS) in NPC, and shorter disease-free survival (DFS, HR: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.43-0.84) in cancers. Conclusions. Low ApoA-I level might be an unfavorable prognostic factor in multiple malignancies, and serum ApoA-I could serve as a noninvasive marker to predict cancer prognosis.