Alcohol consumption and gastric cancer risk in Eastern Asia: A Meta-analysis of cohort studies

OBJECTIVE An association between alcohol drinking and gastric cancer risk has been reported,but the conclusions of relative studies are contradictory and the issue is still open to discussion and quantification.Incidence of gastric cancer is the highest in Eastern Asia and this study sought to evaluate systematically the relationship between drinking alcohol and risk of gastric cancer in Eastern Asia by a meta-analysis.METHODS The Pubmed,Embase,Cochrane Library databases and China Biology Medicine disc were systematically searched until to November 2017 to identify all published cohorts studies evaluating the association between alcohol consumption and risk of gastric cancer.According to inclusion and exclusion criteria,we screened literatures,extracted data and evaluated the quality of the included studies.R language meta package was used to evaluate combined effect size,and dosresmeta package was used to analyze drinking and the risk of gastric cancer by meta-analysis of dose-response.RESULTS A total of 986 relevant researches were retrieved and twelve literatures of them were included in this data analysis.Five studies were included in the dose-response analysis.The result of heterogeneity test showed that I2=0,P=0.99,without statistical significance,and combined effect size was evaluated by the fixed effect model,and the result showed the relative risk(RR) was 1.056(95%CI:1.006-1.109),indicating that drinking could increase the risk of gastric cancer.Linear dose response meta analysis was performed by the fixed effect model.Tendency of linear model(P=0.032 8) showed that the risk of gastric cancer increased with the increase of alcohol consumption.CONCLUSION The results from this meta-analysis suggested that alcohol consumption can increase the risk of gastric cancer in Eastern Asia.