Prognostic and clinicopathological differences of DcR3 in gastrointestinal cancer: evidence from meta-analysis

Many studies reported that DcR3 participated in the clinicopathological characteristics of gastrointestinal cancer, however, they all included few patients and had inconsistent results. So we conducted a meta-analysis to explore the correlation between overexpression of DcR3 and the clinicopathological characteristics of gastrointestinal cancer. Identical search strategies were used to search relevant literatures in PubMed, Web of Science and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database. The prognostic significances and clinicopathological differences of DcR3 in gastrointestinal cancer were analyzed. A total of 28 studies comprising 3294 gastrointestinal cancer patients met the inclusion criteria. Overexpression of DcR3 was closely related with these clinicopathological features, including TNM stages (OR = 1.63, 95% CI 1.35-1.98), grade of differentiation (OR = 1.31, 95% CI 1.10-1.56), lymph node metastasis (OR = 2.02, 95% CI 1.66-2.47), infiltration degree (OR = 1.72, 95% CI 1.38-2.12), and metastasis (OR = 1.66, 95% CI 1.27-2.16). DcR3 may play an important role in gastrointestinal cancer, and DcR3 indicated distinct clinicopathologic features.