Clinical characteristics and prognostic significance of galectins for patients with gastric cancer: A meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE

To explore the relationships between the expression level of different galectins and its prognostic value for patients with gastric cancer.

METHODS

The PubMed, EMbase, the Cochrane Library and Web of Science databases were systematically searched. All the eligible studies were included according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. All the relevant data was extracted by two independent researchers. The quality assessment was conducted according to the evaluation of the quality of prognosis study which published by Harden in 2006. The STATA 12.0 software was used to perform a meta-analysis.

RESULTS

All of 8 retrospective case-controlled studies involving 2093 patients with gastric cancer were included in this study. The results of meta-analysis presented that the elevated galectin-1 which is related to the poor overall survival (HR = 1.85, 95% CI: 1.33-2.58; P < 0.001) may predicted a larger tumor size (OR = 2.20, 95% CI: 1.35-3.35; P = 0.001) and was positively associated with the higher expression of VEGF (OR = 1.44, 95% CI: 1.14-1.82; P = 0.002). Moreover, the decreased galectin-3 (HR = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.36-0.67; P < 0.001), galectin-8 (HR = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.36-0.67; P < 0.001) and galectin-9 (HR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.66-0.92; P = 0.003) were also significantly associated with poorer prognosis. Our meta-analysis also showed that lower expression of galectin-3 was also related to lymphatic vessel invasion (OR = 0.48, 95% CI: 0.26-0.89; P = 0.018), worse TNM stages (OR = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.32-0.40; P < 0.001), deeper invasive depth (OR = 0.33, 95% CI: 0.21-0.51; P < 0.001) and poorer differentiation grade (OR = 0.10, 95% CI: 0.04-0.25; P < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

High expression of galectin-1 or low expression of galectin-3, -8 and -9 were significantly related to a poorer prognosis for patients with gastric cancer. The expression level of galectins was associated with clinical characteristics and were potential independent prognostic predictor for GC patients.