The diagnostic and clinicopathological value of trefoil factor 3 in patients with gastric cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

To assess the diagnostic value of Trefoil factor 3 (TFF3) and the correlation between TFF3 expression and clinicopathological features in patients with gastric cancer (GC). PubMed, The Cochrane, EMbase, and Web of Science were retrieved comprehensively to collect relevant literature. The search ended on 31 May 2020. All data were analyzed using PubMed, The Cochrane, EMbase, and Web of Science were retrieved to collect relevant articles. All data from the included studies were subjected to meta-analysis using Stata 12.0 software. Seventeen studies involved 4654 subjects were included. For the diagnostic value of TFF3 for GC, the sensitivity, specificity, and AUC were 0.71, 0.80, and 0.80, respectively. For the clinicopathological value of TFF3, tissue TFF3 expression showed a higher risk of lymph node metastasis (OR 2.20, 95% CI 1.75–2.78, p < 0.001) and muscularis propria invasion (≥T2) (1.51, 1.13–2.03, p = 0.006), as well as worse TNM stage (2.26, 1.63–3.12, p < 0.001) and histological type (1.72, 1.34–2.20, p < 0.001), while no apparent relationship was found for serous membrane invasion (T4), venous invasion, and peritoneal metastasis. TFF3 may be a promising biomarker for GC, and the TFF3 expression is likely to be involved in the invasion, metastasis, and differentiation of GC.