Weiwei Tang,1,* Hanjin Wang,1,* Yuemei Wang,2 Xiaowei Wang3 1Department of General Surgery, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Operation Anesthesiology, Huai’an First People’s Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai’an, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Medical Oncology, Huai’an First People’s Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai’an, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: A number of studies have investigated the roles of excision repair cross-complementation group 1 (ERCC1) gene rs3212986 polymorphisms as potential biomarkers in gastric cancer (GC). However, the results were inconsistent. Here, we performed a meta-analysis to explore ERCC1 rs3212986 polymorphisms in the chemotherapy response and clinical outcome of GC.Methods: PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science were searched up to July 28, 2017, for studies on the association between ERCC1 rs3212986 A/C polymorphisms and response to chemotherapy as well as overall survival time of GC. A fixed-effect or random-effect model was used to calculate the pooled odds ratios (ORs) based on the results from the heterogeneity tests.Results: The result revealed that there was no significant association between the ERCC1 rs3212986 A/C polymorphism and response to chemotherapy in GC under comparison models (AA + CA versus CC, OR 0.95, P=0.80, AA versus CA, OR 0.85, P=0.55, AA versus CC, OR 0.74, P=0.47). Further identification suggested that ERCC1 rs3212986 A/C polymorphisms were not linked with the overall survival of GC (AA + CA versus CC, OR 1.09, P=0.52, AA versus CA, OR 1.05, P=0.85, AA versus CC, OR 1.43, P=0.23).Conclusion: Our meta-analysis indicated that the ERCC1 rs3212986 A/C polymorphism was not associated with response to chemotherapy or overall survival time in GC. Well-designed studies with larger sample sizes and more ethnic groups should be performed to further validate our results. Keywords: ERCC1, rs3212986, cancer, polymorphism, meta-analysis, survival, prognoses