[Association between hepatitis B virus infection and risk of pancreatic cancer: a meta-analysis].

Objective To investigate the relationship between hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and risk of pancreatic cancer.Methods Various English and Chinese language literature databases,including PubMed,Web of Knowledge,Embase,Cochrane Library and the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure,were searched for case-control studies comparing rates of HBV infection and pancreatic cancer.The RevMan metaanalysis software,version 5.0,was used to perform the meta-analysis of the 6 included studies.Results Compared with the control group,the pancreatic cancer group had a significantly higher rate of positivity for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) (8.87％ vs.5.86％,odds ratio (OR) =1.24,95％ confidence interval (CI):1.06 to 1.47,P =0.009) and a lower rate of patients never exposed to HBV (defined as HBsAg(-)/hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc)(-) (69.4％ vs.77.1％,OR =0.68,95％ CI:0.51 to 0.92,P =0.01).There was no significant difference between the two groups in the rate of hepatitis B e antigen positivity (P =0.55).Conclusion HBV-infected patients with HBsAg(+) status are at greater risk of developing pancreatic cancer; however,since most of the research studies evaluated were conducted in Asians,the generalizability of this conclusion is unknown. Key words: Pancreatic neoplasms;  Hepatitis B virus;  Hepatitis B surface antigens