College of Health and Human Sciences, Charles Darwin University, Ellengowan Drive, Darwin, Northern Territory, 0909, Australia.
Department of Genetic Engineering, Kattankulathur Campus, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 603203, India.
World J Surg Oncol. 2018 Jun 18;16(1):111. doi: 10.1186/s12957-018-1408-4.
The study performed by Zhou et al. (World J Surg Oncol 15:104, 2017) titled "Clinical and prognostic significance of HIF-1α overexpression in oral squamous cell carcinoma: a meta-analysis" attempts to highlight hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha as a possible prognostic marker in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). We would like to underline a few points which may affect such a conclusion. The correlations between HIF-1α expression and tumour size as well as tumour stage are debatable. Further, the subgroup analysis incorporating Australia and Europe into a single subgroup limits the viability of the prognostic analysis of HIF-1α. We also suggest future studies in the same research area to analyse head and neck squamous cell carcinoma instead of OSCC, to ameliorate the limitations encountered by Zhou et al., due to the scarcity of relevant clinical data and a low number of studies about OSCC.
由 Zhou 等人进行的研究（World J Surg Oncol 15:104, 2017），题为“口腔鳞状细胞癌中 HIF-1α 过表达的临床和预后意义：一项荟萃分析”，试图强调缺氧诱导因子-1α 作为口腔鳞状细胞癌（OSCC）中的一个可能的预后标志物。我们想强调几点，这些要点可能会影响到这一结论。HIF-1α 表达与肿瘤大小和肿瘤分期之间的相关性存在争议。此外，将澳大利亚和欧洲纳入单个亚组的亚组分析限制了 HIF-1α 预后分析的可行性。我们还建议在同一研究领域进行未来的研究，分析头颈部鳞状细胞癌，而不是 OSCC，以改善 Zhou 等人由于 OSCC 相关临床数据稀缺和研究数量较少而遇到的局限性。
