Introduction: Diet is closely related to the occurrence of esophageal cancer (EC). Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII), as a novel index that describes the inflammatory potential of diet, was widely used in many diseases.
Objective: To systematically analyze the relationship between DII and the risk of esophageal cancer.
Methods: We mainly searched relative studies in PubMed, Cochrane library, Web of Science, and other literature database. The random-effect model was used for meta-analysis, and subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis were used to detect the origin of heterogeneity.
Results: We finally obtained 6 articles (8 studies). All studies were case-control studies which consisted of 1961 cases and 3577 controls. In this study, compared with the lowest DII category, the highest DII category had a higher risk of esophageal cancer, and the pooled odds ratio (OR) of the 8 studies were 2.54 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.90-3.40; I = 65.7%, P = .005). Furthermore, regardless of the differences in published year, DII components, geographic location, and study quality, there was still an increased risk of esophageal cancer in the highest DII category compared with the lowest DII category.
Conclusions: Our results inferred that DII was positively correlated with esophageal cancer risk and it could be used as a tool to predict the esophageal cancer risk and evaluate human health.