Objective: We aim to investigate whether the breast cancer metastasis suppressor gene, breast cancer metastasis suppressor 1 (BRMS1), is correlated with clinicopathological features of breast cancer or not.
Materials and methods: Following a stringent inclusion and exclusion criteria, case-control studies related to the association between BRMS1 and breast cancer were selected from articles retrieved by electronic database searches. All statistical analyses were performed by Stata version 12.0 (Stata Corp, College Station, TX, USA).
Results: A total of 12 studies were ultimately included in this meta-analysis. Results of our meta-analysis suggested that BRMS1 protein in breast cancer tissues was significantly lower compared with normal breast tissues (odds ratio [OR] =0.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] =0.04-0.15, P < 0.001). The BRMS1 protein in metastatic breast cancer tissue was lower than that in nonmetastatic breast cancer tissue (OR = 0.20, 95% CI = 0.13-0.29, P < 0.001), and BRMS1 protein in tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stages 1, 2 was found to be higher than TNM stages 3, 4 (OR = 4.62, 95% CI = 2.77-7.70, P < 0.001). With respect to breast cancer types, BRMS1 protein in all the three major types of breast cancer was lower than the normal tissues. We also found strong correlations between BRMS1 mRNA levels and TNM stage and tumor size.
Conclusion: Our meta-analysis results showed that reduced BRMS1 expression level was significantly associated with clinicopathological features of breast cancer, suggesting that loss of expression or reduced levels of BRMS1 might be a strong indicator of the metastatic capacity of breast cancer, with poor prognosis.
Keywords: Anti-metastasis; breast cancer; breast cancer metastasis suppressor 1; clinicopathological features; invasion; meta-analysis; metastasis; prognosis.