The miR-146a rs2910164 G > C Polymorphism and Susceptibility to Digestive Cancer in Chinese

Background: Several studies have reported the role of the miR-146a rs2910164 G > C polymorphism as asusceptibility factor for several digestive cancers. However, the results have been controversial. Therefore, weconducted the present meta-analysis to obtain the most reliable estimate of the association.
Methods: PubMed,Embase and Web of Science databases were searched. Crude odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals(CIs) were extracted and pooled to assess the strength of the association between miR-146a rs2910164 G > Cpolymorphism and digestive cancer risk. A total of four eligible studies including 3,447 cases and 5,041 controlsbased on the search criteria were included.
Results: We observed that miR-146a rs2910164 G > C polymorphismwas not significantly correlated with digestive cancer risks when all studies were pooled into the meta-analysis.While we found that miR-146a rs2910164 polymorphism was not associated with gastric cancer, it was significantlylinked with hepatocellular cancer risk (the homozygote codominant model: OR = 1.40, 95% CI = 1.04-1.87). Inthe stratified analysis by ethnicity, significant associations were observed in Chinese population for the allelecontrast model (OR = 1.25; 95% CI = 1.12-1.38), for the homozygote codominant model (OR = 1.62; 95% CI= 1.28-2.04), and for the recessive model (OR = 1.38; 95% CI = 1.16-1.64). However, studies with Asian groupspresented no significant association for all genetic models.
Conclusions: This meta-analysis suggests that themiR-146a rs2910164 G > C polymorphism is a low-penetrant risk factor for digestive cancers in Chinese.