NEAT1 is a potential prognostic biomarker for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Abstract Nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (NEAT1) has been found to be dysregulated and associated with clinical progression in various human cancers. The clinical and prognostic value of NEAT1 in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) was still controversial. The aim of our study was to provide more sufficient evidence that NEAT1 expression is correlated with overall survival in patients with NPC. NEAT1 expression was detected in NPC tissue samples, and the relationship between NEAT1 expression and clinical parameters, including prognosis, was analyzed. The meta‐analysis was performed to further assess the prognostic significance of NEAT1 expression in patients with NPC. In our study, we found that the levels of NEAT1 expression were increased in NPC clinical tissue specimens, and associated with advanced M classification and clinical stages. Moreover, the Kaplan‐Meier analysis suggested that the levels of NEAT1 expression were negatively associated with the overall survival of patients with NPC. Furthermore, univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses showed that NEAT1 high‐expression was an independent unfavorable prognostic factor in patients with NPC. Finally, we conducted a meta‐analysis including 297 patients with NPC from the three studies, and found the pooled HR (95% confidence interval [CI]) was 1.64 (95% CI: 0.68‐3.93) for the random effects model and 2.04 (95% CI: 1.42‐2.95) for the fixed effect model. In conclusion, NEAT1 is a potential prognostic biomarker for NPC, but more studies are needed to further verify the prognostic value of NEAT1 in patients with NPC.