Clinicopathological significance of HSP27 in gastric cancer: a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND Many studies have provided increasing evidence to demonstrate that HSP27 has been involved in the development of gastric cancer; however, they all include few patients and the results remain controversial. Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate correlations between HSP27 and the clinicopathological characteristics of gastric cancer. METHODS An electronic search for relevant articles was conducted in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, EMBASE database, Chinese CNKI, and Wan Fang. Data on the relationship between HSP27 expression and lymph node metastasis, serosal invasion, gender, tumor size, differentiation, and TNM stage were extracted. Pooled odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were estimated by forest plot. RESULTS The pooled analyses suggested that HSP27 expression was significantly associated with the incidence of gastric cancer. However, HSP27 expression had no significant relationship with lymph node metastasis, serosal invasion, gender, tumor size, differentiation, and TNM stage. CONCLUSION Our meta-analysis demonstrated that HSP27 may play vital roles in tumorigenesis and deterioration of gastric cancer. However, further high-quality studies are needed to provide more reliable evidence.