Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 7, 2015; 21(5): 1641-1649
Published online Feb 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i5.1641
HIF-1α -1790G>A polymorphism significantly increases the risk of digestive tract cancer: A meta-analysis
Xiao Sun, Ying-Di Liu, Wei Gao, Shao-Hua Shen, Meng Li
Xiao Sun, Wei Gao, Shao-Hua Shen, Meng Li, Department of Gastroenterology of PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
Ying-Di Liu, Department of Gastroenterology, Hainan Branch of PLA General Hospital, Sanya 572000, Hainan Province, China
Author contributions: Sun X, Liu YD and Gao W designed the study, analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript; Shen SH and Li M contributed to the databases searches, the selection of studies and discussions; Liu YD designed the study, contributed to the discussion and edited the manuscript as the corresponding author.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Ying-Di Liu, MD, PhD, Department of Gastroenterology, Hainan Branch of PLA General Hospital, Haitangwan, Sanya 572000, Hainan Province, China. liuyingti@yeah.net
Telephone: +86-751-38831528 Fax: +86-898-38853390
Received: June 26, 2014
Peer-review started: June 27, 2014
First decision: August 15, 2014
Revised: August 27, 2014
Accepted: September 30, 2014
Article in press: September 30, 2014
Published online: February 7, 2015
Processing time: 227 Days and 23.4 Hours
Abstract

AIM: To investigate the association between hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) polymorphisms (-1772C>T and -1790G>A) and the risk of digestive tract cancer.

METHODS: A total of 13 eligible studies were retrieved from PubMed, EMBASE, and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database. The odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to estimate the strength of the associations.

RESULTS: By pooling the eligible studies, we found that the HIF-1α -1772C>T polymorphism was not associated with the risk of developing digestive tract cancer (dominant comparison, OR: 1.156; 95%CI: 0.839-1.593; Pheterogeneity = 0.007), and no significant association was found in the Asian population or the Caucasian population. However, for the -1790G>A polymorphism, carriers of the variant -1790A allele had a significantly increased risk of digestive tract cancer compared with those with the wildtype -1790G allele (dominant comparison, OR: 3.252; 95%CI: 1.661-6.368; Pheterogeneity < 0.001). Additionally, this increased risk of digestive cancer was only detected in Asians; there was no significant association in Caucasians.

CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis demonstrates that the HIF-1α -1790G>A polymorphism is associated with a significantly increased risk of digestive tract cancer, while the -1772C>T polymorphism is not.

Keywords: Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α; Digestive tract cancer; Polymorphisms; Cancer risk; Meta-analysis

Core tip: The functional polymorphisms of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) (-1772C>T and -1790G>A) have been extensively investigated; however, the relationship between HIF-1α polymorphisms and digestive tract cancer has remained unclear. In this work, we found that the HIF-1α -1772C>T polymorphism was not associated with the overall risk of developing digestive tract cancer (dominant comparison, OR: 1.156; 95%CI: 0.839-1.593; Pheterogeneity = 0.007). However, the variant -1790A allele significantly increased the risk of digestive tract cancer (OR: 3.252; 95%CI: 1.661-6.368; Pheterogeneity < 0.001).