Objective To systematically review the prognostic and clinicopathological value of FOXM1 expression in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods Databases including PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library (Issue 1, 2016), CNKI, WanFang Data and CBM were searched to collect cohort studies about the prognostic value of FOXM1 expression in NSCLC from inception to May 30th 2016. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Then meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 software. Results A total of 8 cohort studies, involving 781 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that FOXM1 expression was higher in tumor stage Ⅲ to Ⅳ than stageⅠtoⅡ(OR=2.24, 95%CI 1.25 to 4.01,P=0.007). Higher FOXM1 expression group had a shorter overall survival (HR=1.77, 95%CI 1.42 to 2.22,P<0.000 01) and disease-free survival (HR=1.96, 95%CI 1.04 to 3.17,P=0.04) than those of the lower FOXM1 expression group. Conclusion Current evidence shows that FOXM1 expression is associated with NSCLC stage. Furthermore, FOXM1 overexpression may be prognosis biomarker for NSCLC patients. Due to the limited quantity and quality of included studies, the above conclusions are needed to be verified by more high quality studies.
