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Pernicious anemia has an increased risk for gastric cancer.
It is not established whether pernicious anemia patients need to undergo endoscopic/histological follow-up.
Professor Annibale and colleagues from Italy provided a systematic overview of the literature on pernicious anemia and the development of gastric cancer, to estimate the gastric cancer incidence-rate.
According to PRISMA, the team identified studies on pernicious anemia patients reporting the incidence of gastric cancer.
Quality of studies was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale.
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| The calculated pooled gastric cancer incidence-rate was about 0.3% per person-years |
| Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics |
The team performed a meta-analysis on annual gastric cancer incidence rates.
The researchers identified 27 studies that met eligibility criteria.
The team found that 7 studies were of high, 6 of medium, 10 of low and 4 of very low quality.
Gastric cancer incidence-rates ranged from 0% to 0.2% per person-years in 7 American, from 0% to 0.5% in 2 Asiatic, from 0% to 1.2% in 11 Northern European studies, and from 0% to 0.9% in 7 studies from other European countries.
The incidence-rates of gastric cancer ranged from 0% to 1.2% per person-years in studies which used gastroscopy, and from 0.1% to 0.9% in those based on International Classification of Disease.
The team found that heterogeneity between studies was not statistically significant at the 5% level.
The calculated pooled gastric cancer incidence-rate was about 0.3% per person-years.
Meta-analysis showed overall gastric cancer relative risk in pernicious anemia as 6.8.
Professor Annibale's team, "This systematic review shows a pooled gastric cancer incidence-rate in pernicious anemia of 0.3% per person-years, and an estimated nearly 7-fold relative risk of gastric cancer in pernicious anemia patients."
"Further high quality studies are needed to confirm this higher risk."
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