Prognostic value and clinicopathological significance of serum- and tissue-based cytokeratin 18 express level in breast cancer: a meta-analysis

Cytokeratin 18 (CK18), a type I cytokeratin of the intermediate filament family, has been associated with the prognosis of cancer patients for decades. However, its exact role in predicting the clinical outcome of breast cancer remains controversial. To comprehensively investigated the prognostic value of CK18 in breast cancer, a systematically meta-analysis was conducted to explore the association between CK18 expression and overall survival. Literature collection was conducted by retrieving electronic databases Pubmed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, EMBASE, and OVID completely (up to January 1, 2017). Nine relevant studies with 4857 cases assessing the relationship between CK18 high expression and the outcome of breast cancer patients were enrolled in our analysis. The results indicated that the high level of CK18 expression was significantly associated with overall survival of breast cancer patients via a specimen-depended manner. Reports which used serum to detect the expression of CK18 predicted a poor outcome of breast cancer (HR = 1.24, 95%CI: 1.11-1.38, P <0.0001), while studies which used tissue as specimen indicated a reverse result (HR = 0.71, 95%CI: 0.60-0.84, P <0.00001). Moreover, overexpression of CK18 was highly relevant to advanced clinicopathological parameters of breast cancer, such as progesterone receptor, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2, tumor size, tumor stage, nodal status, and tumor grade. Taken together, the present study demonstrated that CK18 might be served as a novel biomarker to predict clinicopathological features and the outcome of breast cancer.