Incidence of Gastric Cancer in the Patients with Schizophrenia: A Meta-analysis

Background: Several studies have reported the incidence of gastric cancer (GC) in the patients with schizophrenia, but the incidence of GC in schizophrenia patients remains controversy. It is necessary to perform a meta-analysis to detect the incidence of GC in schizophrenia patients. Methods: We search the relevant articles from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library and Chinese electronic databases. The incidence of GC in schizophrenia patients and heterogeneity were analyzed with STATA10.0 software. Results: Our meta-analysis included total 283,422 patients with schizophrenia and 1,024 patients with GC in nine articles. The incidence of GC in schizophrenia patients was 0.62% (95%CI: 0.005-0.008; P<0.001), but there is obvious heterogeneity (I2=98.7%). We next performed subgroup analysis to explore the incidence of GC in schizophrenia patients by gender and region. The GC incidence in male schizophrenia patients (0.28%, 95%CI: 0.001-0.003; P<0.001) was higher than that in female patients (0.23%, 95%CI: 0.002-0.004). In European countries, the GC incidence in schizophrenia patients (0.98%, 95%CI: 0.005-0.008) was higher than that in Asian countries (0.13%, 95%CI: 0.000-0.002; P<0.001). Conclusion: The incidence of GC in patients with schizophrenia was 0.62%. The GC incidence was higher in male and European countries schizophrenia patients, but large cohort studies are needed to confirm further.