ERCC polymorphisms and prognosis of patients with osteosarcoma

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone malignancy in children and teenagers, and its clinical outcome remains poor. Previous studies have investigated the association between excision repair cross-complementing (ERCC) and prognosis of osteosarcoma patients, but their results were inconsistent. We aimed to clarify the associations between ERCC polymorphisms and osteosarcoma prognosis by using meta-analysis. We searched relevant studies in PubMed, Embase, coupled with Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) in human osteosarcoma published prior to April, 2014. Hazard ratios (HR) together with their 95 % confidence intervals (95 % CI) were used to measure the relationship between ERCC mutations and prognosis in patients with osteosarcoma. Pooled results showed that polymorphism of ERCC2 Lys751Gln was associated with the overall survival of osteosarcoma (GG vs. AA, HR = 0.40; 95 % CI 0.18-0.86), and ERCC5 His46His mutation was associated with the event-free survival of osteosarcoma (CC vs. TT, HR = 0.37; 95 % CI 0.15, 0.93). In addition, there is no evidence of association on ERCC1 Asn118Asn, ERCC1 Gln504Lys, and ERCC2 Asp312Asn polymorphisms with prognosis in osteosarcoma. In summary, the ERCC2 Lys751Gln and ERCC5 His46His polymorphisms might influence osteosarcoma prognosis.