Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Comment on ‘Tissue-infiltrating immune cells as prognostic markers in oral squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis’

British Journal of Cancer volume 120, page 1083 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

We read with great interest the recently published systematic review and meta-analysis by Olsen et al.1 entitled ‘Tissue-infiltrating immune cells as prognostic markers in oral squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis'. This work contributes the knowledge to the area regarding significant prognostic value of tissue-infiltrating immune cells in oral cancer. The authors concluded that CD163+ M2 macrophages and CD57+ natural killer cells may be the most promising predictors of survival in oral cancer patients. We appreciate the authors’ thorough analysis, which is a clinically valuable study. However, several important methodological issues should be noted, which may influence the strength of their conclusion in this review.

First, the authors limited their search to Medline and Embase, and did not explore other international databases with broad subject areas, including Cochrane Library, ClinicalTrials.gov and Web of Science databases. Selection of a restricted subset of databases for conducting the literature search can lead to biased results, even incorrect conclusions.2

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Hadler-Olsen, E., Wirsing, A. M. Tissue-infiltrating immune cells as prognostic markers in oral squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br. J. Cancer https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-019-0409-6 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Higgins, J., Green, S. (eds) (2017) Cochrane Handbook For Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 5.1.0. (The Cochrane Collaboration, 2011). http://handbook.cochrane.org. Accessed 19 June 2017.

  3. Soeken, K. L. & Sripusanapan, A. Assessing publication bias in meta-analysis. Nurs. Res. 52, 57–60 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Samarendra, H., Jones, K., Petrinic, T., Silva, M. A., Reddy, S., Soonawalla, Z. et al. A meta-analysis of CXCL12 expression for cancer prognosis. Br. J. Cancer 117, 124–135 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Wang, Y., Zhong, M., Wang, Z., Song, J., Wu, W. & Zhu, D. The preventive effect of antiplatelet therapy in acute respiratory distress syndrome: a meta-analysis. Crit. Care 22, 60 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author contributions

The manuscript was drafted by Lu Zhou and Li Ming and approved of by all authors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology and Translation Neuroscience Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

    Lu Zhou, Ming Li & Tao Zhu

Authors
  1. Lu Zhou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ming Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tao Zhu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tao Zhu.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Note

This work is published under the standard license to publish agreement. After 12 months the work will become freely available and the license terms will switch to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhou, L., Li, M. & Zhu, T. Comment on ‘Tissue-infiltrating immune cells as prognostic markers in oral squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis’. Br J Cancer 120, 1083 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-019-0459-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-019-0459-9

Search

Advanced search

Quick links