Clinical Role of Excision Repair Cross-Complementing 1 Gene Expression in Resected Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Meta-Analysis

Aims To explore the relationship between excision repair cross-complementing 1 (ERCC1) gene expression and clinical pathological parameters and prognosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients who received the surgical therapy. Methods To identify relevant articles, a systematic literature retrieval was conducted in several databases, including the Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PubMed, VIP, Wanfang, and CNKI. The association of ERCC1 gene expression with clinicopathological characteristics and survival was assessed by the pooled relative risk (RR) and hazard ratio (HR) with the corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI), respectively. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the stability of pooled results. Begg's funnel plot and Egger's test were applied to detect potential publication bias. Results A total of nine studies involving 746 patients were included in our meta-analysis, and all patients were from Asian countries, including China, Korea, and Japan. The results indicated that ERCC1 gene expression was significantly associated with lymph node metastasis (RR = 1.30, 95% CI 1.11-1.53; P = 0.002), higher TNM stage (RR = 1.23, 95% CI 1.06-1.43; P = 0.006), worse overall survival (HR = 2.40, 95% CI 1.32-4.37; P < 0.001), and disease-free survival (HR = 1.67, 95% CI 1.15-2.41; P = 0.007). Sensitivity analysis manifested that the pooled results were stable and no significant publication bias was observed. Conclusions ERCC1 gene expression is significantly related to tumor stage and prognosis in resected ESCC patients from Asian countries. More prospective studies with larger samples are needed to testify our findings.