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Meta-Analysis
. 2024 Jan 26;16(3):360.
doi: 10.3390/nu16030360.

Malnutrition as a Risk Factor in the Development of Oral Cancer: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analyses

Romeo Patini  1 , Eleonora Favetti Giaquinto  1   2 , Gioele Gioco  1   2 , Raffaella Castagnola  1 , Vittoria Perrotti  3 , Cosimo Rupe  1 , Leonardo Di Gennaro  4 , Giuseppina Nocca  5   6 , Carlo Lajolo  1   2
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Malnutrition as a Risk Factor in the Development of Oral Cancer: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analyses

Romeo Patini et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

This systematic review and meta-analyses aimed to assess whether malnutrition may increase the incidence of oral cancer. Following the PRISMA statement, the research was conducted on PubMed, Scopus, and MEDLINE via OVID without any time restrictions. The risk of bias was assessed, and the quality of evidence for each performed meta-analysis was evaluated using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework. Sixty-one articles met the inclusion criteria and seven studies underwent quantitative evaluation. For our meta-analysis on hypovitaminosis B, three studies with a total of 90,011 patients were included. An odds ratio of 2.22 was found. Our meta-analysis on the correlation between vitamin C and oral cancer included one study with a total of 866 patients and the derived odds ratio was 1.06. Our meta-analysis on the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and the incidence of oral cancer included three studies with a total of 12,087 patients and the odds ratio was -2.58. The GRADE system showed a moderate strength of evidence due to the presence of studies with a high risk of bias and high indirectness of the data given. The present findings suggest that an inadequate intake of vitamins, particularly vitamin D, poses a risk for the onset of oral cancer.

Keywords: hypovitaminosis; malnutrition; oral cancer; vitamins.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow chart from [15].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Risk of bias summary.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Risk of bias graph [16,17,18,19,20,21,22].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Results of the meta-analysis on the relationship between oral cancer and vitamin B [18,19,21].
Figure 5
Figure 5
Results of the meta-analysis on the relationship between oral cancer and vitamin C [16].
Figure 6
Figure 6
Meta-analysis on the correlation between oral cancer and vitamin D [17,20,22].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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