RESUMO
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To clarify the effect of milk consumption on gastric cancer in China.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and other Chinese databases were searched for randomized controlled trials reporting the relationship between dairy products consumption and gastric carcinoma patients from January 1985 to June 2008. Manual searching was also performed. Gastric carcinoma, dietary, milk or diary product were using as key words. A Meta-analysis method was applied to estimate the combined odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) between dairy product consumption and gastric cancer.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Eight case-control studies published between 1985 and 2008 were selected for Meta-analysis. The cumulative cases and controls were 1684 and 5410, respectively. Fixed-effect model was used because of homogeneity among these studies. The overall pooled OR estimate was 0.57 (95% CI = 0.46 - 0.71), suggesting a negative association between dairy product consumption and gastric cancer.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>This Meta-analysis supports the hypothesis that dairy product consumption might decrease the risk of gastric cancer.</p>