Fig 1.
Flow chart of the study selection process.
Table 1.
Characteristics of studies included in the systematic review and meta-analysis.
Fig 2.
The forest plot of EBV miRNA survival outcomes in NPC and GC patients.
CMA software (version 3.3.070, USA) was used to construct and assess the pooled hazard ratios of HR values for NPC and GC prognostic data. The black square with line indicates the estimated pooled effect of survival for NPC and GC patients randomly allocated to EBV miRNA evaluation. The effect size of EBV miRNA in the included studies was represented by a black diamond, with a 95% confidence interval. A HR of one indicates that there is no difference in the risk of NPC or GC patients’ survival. A HR more than one implies an increased risk of patient survival, whereas a HR less than one indicates a lower risk of patient survival.
Table 2.
The heterogeneity, publication bias and hypothesis testing of the included studies in the meta-analysis.
Table 3.
Selected studies’ quality assessment based on criteria of quality assessment.