The Association Between BRAF^V600E Mutation And Clinicopathological Characteristics Of Papillary Thyroid Microcarcinoma: A Meta-analysis

Objective:Some researchers have found that the BRAFV600 E mutation were associated with aggressive and poor outcome of PTC, it is still controversial.in the PTMC To systematically evaluate it, a systematic review and meta-analysis of the published literatures were carried out.Methods:We conducted a systematic search in Pub Med, EMBASE,OVID,CENTRAL,CNKI,Wanfang and VIP databases for relevant studies. We selected all the studies that reported about BRAFV600 E mutation and clinicopathological features of PTMC patients. A unified document information extraction table was used to extract data. Review Manager 5.3software was applied in data analysis. Individual study-specific odds ratios(ORs) and 95%confidence intervals(CIs) were calculated. Forest plot was drawn according to the data analysis. A fixed effects model or random effects model was used to analyze the data with Meta-analysis. The p = 0.05 was the level of test. p <0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results:We included 27 literatures, 4,656 cases were included in our study. The result of Meta-analysis: gender[OR=1.49(95%CI 1.26-1.76) p ﹤ 0.00001]; age at diagnosis[OR=1.07(95%CI 0.90-1.26) p=0.45];tumor diameter [OR=2.02(95CI% 1.68-2.43) p﹤0.00001];tumor multifocality [OR=1.27(95%CI 1.08-1.48) p=0.003];lymph node metastasis [OR=2.50(95CI 1.59-3.54) p﹤0.0001];extrathyroidal extension [OR=2.59(95%CI 1.90-3.54) p ﹤ 0.00001]; distant metastasis [OR=1.02(95%CI 0.39-2.63)p=0.98];recurrence [OR=2.74(95%CI 1.65-4.53) p﹤0.0001;TNM stage [OR=2.38(95%CI 1.51-3.75) p=0.0002]Conclusion:1.BRAFV600 E mutation is associated with poor prognosis in PTMC, and it is male gender, bigger tumor diameter, LNM, advanced TNM stage, multifocality, tumor recurrence, extrathyroidal extension, and it is not associated with the age at diagnosis and distant metastasis of PTMC.2. BRAFV660 E mutation can be used as a preoperative diagnosis of molecular markers in the preoperative diagnosis of the PTMC patients and thus may help to adopt a more individualized treatment strategies for patients and postoperative management.