Overexpression of COX-2 and clinicopathological features of gastric cancer: a meta-analysis

Background: To evaluate the correlation between COX-2 overexpression and clinicopathological features of gastric cancer, thus providing theoretical basis for anti-COX-2 targeted therapy.

Methods: The literature about COX-2 expression and gastric cancer was searched in PubMed, Wangfang, VIP, CNKI from the inception to September 2019, with "gastric cancer", "COX-2", "cyclooxygenase" as keywords. Stata 15.0 was used to analyze. Age, gender, differentiation, infiltration depth, lymph node metastasis, tumor size, TNM staging were analyzed by OR (95% CI).

Results: Nine studies involving 1,289 patients with gastric cancer were identified, among which 878 cases existed COX-2 overexpression. COX-2 overexpression was related to the infiltration depth (OR=1.76; 95% CI: 1.01-1.306; P<0.01) and lymph node metastasis (OR=3.08; 95% CI: 1.64-5.79; P<0.01). While, it was not related to age, gender, differentiation and tumor size.

Conclusions: COX-2 overexpression is valuable in predicting infiltration depth and lymph node metastasis, and could be a predictor of poor prognosis in gastric cancer. COX-2-targeted therapy can be considered as one of the comprehensive treatments for gastric cancer.