Prognostic Value of Pretreatment Albumin to Globulin Ratio in Lung Cancer: A Meta-Analysis.

To explore the predictive role of pretreatment albumin to globulin ratio (AGR) for prognosis in lung cancer. A comprehensive literature retrieval was performed in the PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science and EMBASE databases up to May 20, 2019. The pooled hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were applied to assess the correlation of pretreatment AGR with overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). Sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the stability of results. Bess's funnel plot and Egger's test were conducted to detect potential publication bias. Eight articles involving 3496 patients were included in our meta-analysis and all studies were from Asian countries. The results demonstrated that a low pretreatment AGR was significantly associated with poor OS (HR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.49-2.38, <0.001) and DFS (HR = 2.09, 95% CI: 1.56-2.81, <0.001) and sensitivity analysis indicated the stability of above results. Publication bias test showed that there were two potentially unpublished articles, but they did not have a significant influence on the results of our meta-analysis. Our study manifested that pretreatment AGR was a reliable predictor for survival and it may contribute to the risk evaluation and therapy strategy formulation of lung cancer patients.