Abstract
The albumin/globulin ratio (AGR) has been widely reported to be a potential predictor of prognosis in digestive system cancers (DSCs), but convincing conclusions have not been made. Therefore, herein, we performed a meta-analysis of relevant studies regarding this topic to evaluate the prognostic value of AGR in patients with DSCs. Three databases, including PubMed, EMBase, and Web of science, were searched comprehensively for eligible studies through September 8, 2017. The outcomes of interest included overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), and cancer-specific survival (CSS). In our meta-analysis, pooled analysis of 13 studies with 9269 patients showed that a low AGR was significantly correlated with poor OS (HR = 1.94; 95% CI: 1.57–2.38; P <0.001). Five studies with 6538 participants involved DFS, and our pooled analysis of these studies also demonstrated that there was a significant association of a low AGR with worse DFS (HR = 1.49; 95% CI: 1.10 to 2.00; P < 0.001). In addition, only 2 studies referred to CSS, and we also detected a significant relationship between a low AGR and worse CSS from the results of our meta-analysis. In summary, a low pretreatment AGR was related to unfavorable survival in human digestive system cancers. A low pretreatment AGR may be a useful predictive prognostic biomarker in human digestive system cancers.
Highlights
Digestive system cancers are threaten human life and health [1]
5 studies were on colorectal cancer [11,12,13,14,15], 4 studies involved gastric cancer [9, 10, 22, 23], 3 studies referred to esophageal cancer[8, 24, 25], and the rest of the included studies were on pancreatic cancer[16], liver cancer[17] and cholangiocarcinoma [26]
The results indicated that a low pretreatment albumin/globulin ratio (AGR) was significantly related to worse survival outcomes in digestive system cancers
Summary
Digestive system cancers are threaten human life and health [1]. A recent study reported that the incidence rates of several digestive system cancers, including hepatocarcinoma, esophagus carcinoma, pancreatic cancer and intestinal malignancies, have a tendency to be elevated, cancer-associated death has been continuously decreasing over the past two decades [2]. The epidemiology of digestive system cancers (DSCs) remains grim. Several poor clinicopathological characteristics, such as advanced clinical stage, poor tumor differentiation and larger tumor size, were popularly recognized to be significantly associated with an unfavorable prognosis, but patients with similar clinicopathological characteristics often suffer different survival outcomes[1]. Identification of new reliable biomarkers that can more precisely predict the prognosis of patients with DSCs is very imperative.
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