Existing data from several reports on the association between lipid profile and ovarian tumour (OT) suggests divergent conclusions. Our aim was to examine whether circulating lipid profile: total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) differed between cases and non-cases of OT.

Electronic repositories; PUBMED, EMBASE and Cochrane library were explored through December 2019 to retrieve published articles for inclusion in the meta-analysis after quality assessment. Heterogeneity was assessed using I² statistics, the effect of individual studies on the overall effect size was tested using sensitivity analysis and funnel plot was used to evaluate publication bias.

Twelve studies, involving 1767 OT cases and 229,167 non-cases of OT were included in this meta-analysis and I² statistics ranged between 97 and 99%. Mean circulating TC (− 16.60 [− 32.43, − 0.77]mg/dL; P = 0.04) and HDL (− 0.25[− 0.43, − 0.08]mmol/L; P = 0.005) were significantly lower among OT cases compared to non-OT cases.

Decreased TC and HDL profiles were observed among subjects with OT in this collection of reports. The implications of TC and HDL in tumour manifestations and growth need to be validated in a large multi-ethnic longitudinal cohort adjusting for relevant confounders.