Nestin Expression Is Associated with Poor Clinicopathological Features and Prognosis in Glioma Patients: an Association Study and Meta-analysis

Nestin has been identified as a molecular marker of neural progenitor cells and putative glioma stem cells (GSCs). Various studies examining the relationship between nestin expression with the clinical outcome in glioma patients have yielded inconclusive results. Thus, we conducted a systematic review to evaluate the association of nestin with prognosis and clinicopathological features of glioma patients. The electronic searches were performed through the database of PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, and CNKI. In total, this meta-analysis included 14 studies covering 897 nestin + cases and 704 controls. The correlation between nestin expression and clinicopathological or prognostic parameters was evaluated by Stata 11.0 software. Our results showed that nestin protein abundance was significantly correlated with the histological grade [odds ratio (OR) = 4.36, 95 % confidence interval (CI) = 2.14–8.88, P = 0.003] of glioma. With respect to prognosis, nestin expression was positively correlated with overall survival (OS) [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.98, 95 % CI = 1.30–3.02, P = 0.000] and progression-free survival (PFS) (HR = 1.90, 95 % CI = 1.18–3.07, P = 0.040). The further stratified analysis not only defined the predictive function of nestin in different ages but also revealed that different antibodies did not alter the positive outcomes and higher standard cutoff values were more suitable for the accurate assay of nestin. Taken together, our results indicate that nestin may play an important role in the prediction of the clinicopathology and poor prognosis of glioma patients. This study should be taken into consideration in the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic programs.