Utilizing circulating tumour DNA as a prognostic predictor of gastric cancer: a meta-analysis

Background: Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) has demonstrated robust diagnostic accuracy in several digestive cancers. However, the prognostic role of ctCDNA in gastric cancer (GC) is still controversial. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the prognostic value of ctDNA in GC.Methods: PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane databases were searched to identify studies reporting the use of ctDNA to predict GC outcome and all relevant studies published until November 2022 were enrolled for our analysis. Data were extracted by two authors independently and statistic analysis was conducted by R program with 'meta' and 'metafor' packages.Results: A total of 34 qualified articles with 5091 subjects were incorporated into our meta-analysis. The corresponding Hazard ratio (HR) of overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were 2.74 (95% CI:2.24-3.35), 3.13 (95% CI:2.08-4.72) and 3.04 (95% CI:2.46-3.76), respectively, in GC patients.Conclusion: Blood-based ctDNA assay would be a potential novel biomarker for GC evaluation and prediction.Simple Summary: This is the integrated meta-analysis on the association of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) and prognosis of gastric cancer (GC) with an increasing number of studies exploring the prognostic value of GC in the last few years, which depicted that the detection of ctDNA could be a promising predictor in GC patients.