Prognostic and Clinicopathological Significance of CXCL1 Expression in Gastric Cancer: A Meta-Analysis.

Abstract Background: Some studies have shown that CXCL1 expression in gastric cancer (GC) is associated with survival and clinicopathological characteristics. However, the evidence remains inconclusive. Thus, we aim to further explore the clinicopathological significance and potential prognostic role of CXCL1 expression in GC.Methods: Databases of EMBASE, PubMed Web of Science and the Cochrane Library were systematically searched for the eligible studies from their establishment to July 16, 2020, which reported the association between CXCL1 expression and survival in GC. The quantitative meta-analysis was carried out with Stata SE12.0 software. Results: A total of 1474 patients from 9 eligible studies were included in the present meta-analysis. Our results demonstrated that elevated expression level of CXCL1 was significantly associated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR=1.68; 95%CI: 1.26-2.24, P<0.001). The subgroup analysis revealed that elevated CXCL1 expression was found to be associated with a poor OS in Chinese and Japanese patients. Moreover, the stratification analysis by detection methods showed that elevated CXCL1 expression had a significantly poor OS effect on GC patients by IHC but not by RT-PCR. Besides, high CXCL1 expression was obviously associated with higher depth of tumor invasion, earlier lymph node metastasis and more advanced TNM stage compared with low CXCL1 expression in GC.Conclusions: CXCL1 may serve as a potential biomarker to predict prognosis and clinicopathological features in GC.