Roles of Tregs in development of hepatocellular carcinoma: A meta-analysis

Table 1 Baseline information of studies included in the meta-analysis

Ref.	No. of HCC patients	No. of controls	Year of study	Country of study
Unitt et al[15]	25	48	2005	United Kingdom
Ormandy et al[16]	84	21	2005	Germany
Guo et al[17]	22	12	2006	China
Fu et al[18]	123	47	2007	China
Peng et al[21]	63	40	2007	China
Yang et al[20]	28	26	2007	China
Cao et al[19]	33	20	2007	United States
Yu et al[22]	58	15	2008	China
Zhang et al[23]	100	20	2008	China
Huang et al[28]	93	24	2010	China
Kuang et al[26]	28	26	2010	China
Wang et al[27]	46	32	2010	China
Yoshizawa et al[24]	57	31	2010	Japan
Zhang et al[25]	49	25	2010	China
Thakur et al[33]	28	15	2011	Indian
1Fan et al[30]	138	-	2011	China
Liu et al[32]	40	28	2011	China
Aleem et al[29]	15	10	2011	Egypt
Feng et al[31]	42	15	2011	China
Wang et al[34]	30	30	2011	China
Yang et al[37]	60	20	2012	China
Wu et al[36]	78	12	2012	China
Chen et al[35]	39	30	2012	China

¹Study data used for subgroup analysis. HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma.

Table 2 Summary of odds ratios and 95%CIs in this meta-analysis

Items	OR		Heterogeneity
	OR (95%CI)	P value	Q2	t2	I2(%)	P value
Ciculating populations of Tregs between HCC patients and health controls	1.868 (1.489-2.344)	0	539.28	0.2741	96.1	0
Populations of Tregs in the tumor and surrounding tissues	4.040 (2.094-7.794)	0	133.41	0.5250	97.0	0
Populations of Tregs in the tumor and the normal liver tissues	2.869 (2.157-3.817)	0	3.77	0.0282	46.9	0.152
Populations of Tregs among HCC patients with different tumor numbers (one tumor mass or more)	1.670 (0.879-3.171)	0.117	94.91	0.3138	97.9	0
Populations of Tregs among HCC patients with different tumor sizes (smaller or larger than 5 cm)	1.170 (0.844-1.620)	0.346	102.41	0.1325	96.1	0
6 Populations of Tregs between HCC patients with or without capsule	1.073 (0.798-1.442)	0.642	61.48	0.0682	95.1	0
Populations of Tregs among HCC patients in different TNM stages (I/II vs III/IV)	0.646 (0.207-2.021)	0.453	365.99	1.3338	99.2	0
Populations of Tregs between HCC patients with or without HBV infection	1.189 (0.904-1.564)	0.216	45.02	0.0856	91.1	0
Populations of Tregs among HCC patients with different AFP levels (lower or higher than 20 ng/mL)	1.458 (0.714-2.975)	0.3	143.21	0.3916	98.6	0

HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma; HBV: Hepatitis B virus; AFP: Alpha-fetoprotein; Tregs: Regulatory T cells.