As shown in Fig. 4, the overall OR revealed that DAPK promoter methylation was significantly higher in lymph node-positive patients with gastric cancer than in lymph node-negative patients with gastric cancer under a fixed-effects model (I2 = 16.8%, OR = 1.50, 95% CI = 1.12–2.01, P = 0.007), which indicated that DAPK promoter methylation was significantly increased risk of GC in lymph node-positive patients. This evidence concerns the gene DAPK1 and gastric cancer.