Prognostic role and clinical significance of tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) and programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression in gastric cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background and objective This study intended to evaluate the prognostic effects of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in survival and their associations with clinicopathological characteristics in patients with gastric cancer.Methods PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest, Web of Science, and Ovid databases were searched to obtain the relevant studies. Eleven studies with 2298 patients were included in this study.Results Like the level of TILs, there were no significant associations between PD-L1 expression and TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, vascular invasion, and tumor location (All p values >= 0.05). Furthermore, there was no significant association between PD-L1 expression with overall survival (OS) (HR = 0.76, 95% CI: 0.55 to 1.05, p value = 0.10) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR = 0.62, 95% CI: 0.10 to 3.68, p value = 0.59). In the assessment of TILs presence and survival associa-tion, the analysis showed no association between TILs presence and overall survival (OS) (HR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.62 to 1.45).Conclusions In conclusion, the study has revealed no prognostic effect of PD-L1 and TILs in gastric cancer patients.

Automated summary

This study found no prognostic effects of PD-L1 and TILs in gastric cancer patients.