Efficacy And Safety Of Cetuximab Combined With Chemotherapy For Patients With Advanced Gastric Cancer: A Meta-analysis

Objective: To systematically evaluate the effectiveness and safety of cetuximab combined with chemotherapy for patients with advanced gastric cancer.Methods: The relevant studies about cetuximab combined with chemotherapy for curing advanced gastric cancer were obtained by searching PubMed,VIP and so on.Two researchers respectively assessed the quality of the literature and collected data.The statistical analysis was dealt with RevMan 5.3 software.Results: A total of 1152 people from 4 studies were selected for data analysis.It displaied between cetuximab combined with chemotherapy group and chemotherapy group did no have statistical significant differences in complete response.Simultaneously,response rate,and partial response had no differences in the two grops.Further analysis showed that combination therapy is not beneficial to Asian.The subgroup analysis based on genotype showed that there were no signifiant differences in survival benefits between HER-2 positive and negative subtypes,and K-ras mutant and wild types.There were also no signifiant differences in 3-4 level thrombocytopenia between cetuximab combined with chemotherapy group and chemotherapy group,but the signifiant differences were found with regards to incidence rates of neutropenia(OR:0.64,95%CI: 0.49-0.83,P=0.001),rash(OR: 38.96,95% CI: 5.30-286.45,P=0.000),hand foot syndrome(OR: 3.25,95%CI: 1.58-6.60,P=0.001)and diarrhea(OR: 1.81,95%CI: 1.11-2.97,P=0.020).Conclusion: cetuximab combined with chemotherapy provided no survival benefit for advanced gastric cancer,yet this program may bring more toxic side effects.