Purpose: Some previous studies have sought to investigate the roles of excision repair cross complementation group 1 (ERCC1 ), ERCC2 , ERCC4 , and ERCC5  gene polymorphisms in the prognosis of osteosarcoma patients. However, their results were inconclusive. Here, we performed a meta-analysis to determine the strength of the association between eight polymorphisms in the ERCC  genes (rs11615, rs3212986, rs2298881, rs13181, rs1799793, rs1800067, rs2296147, and rs1047768) and prognosis of osteosarcoma patients treated with chemotherapy.
Materials and methods: We retrieved the relevant studies from PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science in human osteosarcoma published prior to July 2017. Primary outcomes included overall survival (OS) and event-free survival, expressed by hazard ratios (HRs) with their corresponding 95% CIs. STATA software (version 12.0) was utilized to perform data synthesis.
Results: A total of 13 eligible follow-up studies involving 2,303 patients met all the inclusion criteria, conducted in two populations of ethnic descent: 11 Asians and two Caucasians. In the present meta-analysis, we demonstrated that the homozygous variant genotypes in ERCC2  rs1799793 and ERCC5  rs2296147 were significantly associated with OS in osteosarcoma (TT vs GG for rs1799793: HR = 0.62, 95% CI = 0.41–0.93, P _{heterogeneity} = 0.310, I ² = 15.3%, P = 0.020; TT vs CC for rs2296147: HR = 0.42, 95% CI = 0.23–0.78, P _{heterogeneity} = 0.708, I ² = 0.0%, P = 0.006). In addition, no evidence of association was observed between prognosis in osteosarcoma and ERCC1  rs11615, ERCC1  rs3212986, ERCC1  rs2298881, ERCC2  rs13181, ERCC4  rs1800067, and ERCC5  rs1047768 polymorphisms.
Conclusion: Our meta-analysis indicated that TT genotype in the ERCC2  rs1799793 and ERCC5  rs2296147 might prolong the survival time of patients with osteosarcoma, suggesting that the rs1799793 and rs2296147 polymorphisms can be used as predictors for prognosis of osteosarcoma patients treated with chemotherapy.
Keywords: ERCC2  rs1799793, ERCC5  rs2296147, polymorphisms, osteosarcoma, chemotherapy, prognosis, meta-analysis