Prognostic significance of VEGF-C immunohistochemical expression in colorectal cancer: A meta-analysis.

Background: We sought to comprehensively summarize available evidence for the use of VEGF-C protein to evaluate the clinicopathological and prognostic role of VEGF-C in colorectal cancer.

Methods: Electronic databases from inception to February 2016 were used to search without language restrictions for original articles. A meta-analysis was undertaken to assess the relationship between VEGF-C expression and overall survival (OS) in colorectal cancer.

Results: Twenty-seven studies were included in the final meta-analysis. We aggregated 13 trials (n=1.428 patients) that evaluated the correlation between OS and VEGF-C overexpression. Statistics were performed for OS (HR=1.95; 95%CI=1.31-2.92, P=0.007). When the studies were stratified by the pathological variables, including T stage (n=383 patients; OR=1.79; 95%CI=1.14-2.81), lymph node metastasis (n=3212 patients; OR=4.21; 95%CI=3.49-5.08), M stage (n=1106 patients; OR=4.46; 95%CI=2.96-6.70), vascular invasion(n=1471 patients; OR=2.18; 95%CI=1.65-2.88), lymph invasion (n=831 patients; OR=3.95; 95%CI=2.80-5.56), histo-differentiation (n=1695 patients; OR=1.34; 95%CI=1.00-1.79) and Duke's stage(n=778 patients; OR=4.90; 95%CI=3.55-6.75), TNM stage (n=808 patients; OR=1.73; 95%CI=1.18-2.54) provided critical and comprehensive prognostic information.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that VEGF-C overexpression was associated with OS in colorectal cancer.