RT Journal Article
T1 Prognostic and Clinicopathological Significance of Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase Upregulation in Oral Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
A1 González-Moles, Miguel Ángel
A1 Moya-González, Eloísa
A1 García-Ferrera, Alberto
A1 Nieto-Casado, Paola
A1 Ramos-García, Pablo
K1 biomarker
K1 hEST2
K1 hTERT
K1 meta-analysis
K1 oral cancer
K1 prognosis
K1 replicative immortality
K1 systematic review
K1 telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT)
AB The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the current evidence on the prognostic and clinicopathological significance value of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) upregulation in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched for studies published before April 2022, not restricted by date or publication language. The methodological quality of primary-level studies was critically assessed using the Quality in Prognosis Studies (QUIPS) tool. We carried out meta-analyses, explored heterogeneity and its sources, and performed subgroup, meta-regression, sensitivity, and small-study effects analyses. Twenty-one studies (1698 patients) met inclusion criteria. TERT protein overexpression was significantly associated with worse overall survival (hazard ratio [HR] = 3.01, 95% CI = 1.70−5.35, p  0.10, I2 = 0.0, respectively), which reflects a high quality of evidence. On the other hand, TERT gene mutations obtained constantly nonsignificant null effect sizes for all outcomes investigated, evidencing no prognostic or clinicopathological value. In conclusion, our findings indicate that TERT upregulation is a prognostic indicator of poor survival in oral cancer. Our findings support the immunohistochemical assessment of TERT overexpression, which could probably be incorporated into the prognostic evaluation of OSCC.
SN 2072-6694
YR 2022
FD 2022-07-28
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10668/20910
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10668/20910
LA en
DS RISalud
RD Apr 17, 2025