Prognostic value of T cell immunoglobulin and mucin-domain containing-3 expression in upper gastrointestinal tract tumors: A meta-analysis.

"Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare."

"Supported by the Science and Technology Research Project of Colleges and Universities of Hebei Province, No. QN2020234; the Precision Medicine Joint Cultivation Fund Project of Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province, No. H2021402007; the Clinical Medicine Talent Cultivation Project of Health Commission of Hebei Province, No. 2020; and the Medical Science Research Project of Health Commission of Hebei Province, No. 20211392."

"A literature search was performed in the PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases for studies published as of June 30, 2023. The keywords used were “TIM3,” “gastric cancer,” and “esophageal cancer.” No studies have investigated TIM3 expression in gastroesophageal junction cancer. In addition, to prevent the omission of relevant literature, especially focused literature, we used a new tool, Reference Citation Analysis (https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com), to analyze the articles. Next, a systematic approach was used to select eligible studies and extract relevant data. The reference lists of the selected articles were screened to identify additional studies that met the criteria for inclusion in the present meta-analysis. Only publicly available published data were used for the present study, precluding any concerns related to personal privacy or ethical issues. The present meta-analysis is registered on the PROSPERO website (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/; Registration No. CRD42023438756)."