The importance of MGMT Promoter Methylation Status for Glioblastomas Prognosis: meta-analysis

The authors discussed a meta-analysis on MGMT and glioblastomas and the positivity of methylation expression in patients with these tumors. The review included articles published between 2000 and 2018. As keywords we used: glioblastoma, MGMT or O-6- methylguanine DNA methyltransferase and methylation for the search. A meta-analysis was performed. The survey included only papers written in English, resulting in 34 articles in the review. In the articles, 16,426 glioblastoma samples were analyzed by means of pyrosequencing, methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry or quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to determine the MGMT promoter methylation status. The authors found 2,414 tumor samples having the methylated promoter and 14,012 unmethylated. This article is very impressive, proving the real importance of MGMT methylation and its low positivity rate.