ObjectiveTo investigate the expression and clinical significance of octamer-binding transcription factor 4(Oct-4) in gastric cancer (GC) tissues with meta-analysis. MethodsPubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, CBM, VIP, CNKI, and WanFang Database were searched from their establishment to Oct.2012 for related studies, to investigate the relationship between expression of Oct-4 and the clinicopathological characteristics of GC.After evaluating methodo-logical quality of studies that met the inclusion criteria, RevMan 5.1 software was used to data analysis. ResultsEight studies which enrolled 623 cases of GC were identified.The results of the meta-analysis showed that, as for the positive expression rate of Oct-4, there were significant differences between GC tissues and normal stomach tissues (OR=37.50, 95% CI: 4.76-295.51, P < 0.01), as well as the cell differentiation (OR=0.27, 95% CI: 0.16-0.45, P < 0.01), for that the positive expression rate of Oct-4 in low differentiation of gastric cancer tissues was higher than those of moderate-high differentation group.But there were no significant differences between GC tissues with lymph node metastasis and non-lymph node metastasis (OR=2.09, 95% CI: 0.63-6.94, P=0.23), as well as Ⅰ-Ⅱ stage and Ⅲ-Ⅳ stage (OR=0.62, 95% CI: 0.25-1.54, P=0.30) of GC tissues. ConclusionsOct-4 may participate in the whole course of carcinogenesis of GC, but the relationship between expression of Oct-4 and lymph node metastasis as well as the TNM stage of GC is unclear, which needs more high quality studies to explore the question clearly.