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. 2021 May 1;19:139. doi: 10.1186/s12957-021-02253-y

Table 4.

Meta-analysis of the association between the C-reactive protein to albumin ratio and clinicopathological characteristics

Characteristic No. of studies OR (95% CI) p value Heterogeneity
I2 (%) p value
Age (> median vs. < median) 4 1.470 (1.028–2.102) 0.007 15.853 0.312
Gender (male vs. female) 7 1.452 (1.167–1.807) 0.001 18.219 0.291
Location (colon vs. rectum) 5 1.724 (1.156–2.570) 0.008 35.14 0.187
Location (right vs. left) 3 1.106 (0.586–2.089) 0.756 49.317 0.139
Differentiation (poor vs. mod./well) 5 1.611 (1.195–2.172) 0.002 0 0.587
Stage (III/IV vs. I/II) 2 2.255 (1.642–3.095) < 0.001 0 0.688
pre-treatment CEA (high vs. low)a 3 2.111 (1.028–4.337) 0.042 85.982 0.001
Tumor size (≥ 50 mm vs. < 50 mm) 1 3.687 (2.608–5.211) < 0.001 - -
Lymphatic invasion (yes vs. no) 4 1.020 (0.659–1.579) 0.929 79.615 0.002
NLR (high vs. low)b 2 2.452 (1.381–4.354) 0.002 42.753 0.186
mGPS (1 vs. 0) 5 21.405 (6.468–70.835) < 0.001 66.499 0.018

CEA carcinoembryonic antigen, CI confidence interval, mGPS modified Glasgow prognostic score, NLR neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, OR odds ratio

aTwo studies used CEA 5 ng/mL as the cut-off value, and one study used CEA 8.7 ng/mL as the cut-off value

bThe cut-off values were chosen as 3.0 and 2.9, respectively