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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

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Abstract

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 association, 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.

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Data availability

All the data used in the current study are available from corresponding author under reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was done under the kind support of the Department of Gastroenterology, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, China.

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  1. Juan Ren and Qinglian He Co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Gastroenterology, General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu, 610083, China

    Juan Ren, Qinglian He, Hui Yin, Li Zheng, Lan Li & Xiaoling Wu

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Ren, J., He, Q., Yin, H. et al. 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. Clin Transl Oncol 25, 1436–1445 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12094-022-03040-1

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