Abstract

BACKGROUND Recent evidence suggests that -592 A/C polymorphism in the interleukin-10 (IL-10) gene may influence risk of gastrointestinal tract cancer; however, individual studies have provided conflicting and inconclusive results. Therefore, this meta-analysis was conducted to assess the association between IL-10 -592 A/C polymorphism and gastrointestinal tract cancer susceptibility. METHODS EMBASE, PubMed, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases were searched for case-control studies published before 1 May 2017. A total of 36 studies involving 8069 cases and 13,089 controls were included in the present meta-analysis according to the inclusion criteria. The random- or fixed-effect model was utilized to calculate pooled odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI), and to survey the association. RESULTS By and large IL-10 -592 A/C (rs1800872) polymorphism was not associated with gastrointestinal cancer risk in five genetic models (A vs. C: OR 1.00; 95% CI 0.93, 1.08; P = 0.960; AA vs. CC: OR 0.98; 95% CI 0.85, 1.14; P = 0.835; CA vs. CC: OR 1.01; 95% CI 0.94, 1.08; P = 0.776; AA+CA vs. CC: OR 1.03; 95% CI 0.94, 1.12; P = 0.592; AA vs. CA+CC: OR 0.98; 95% CI 0.87, 1.10; P = 0.666). Similar results were also achieved after stratification by the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, ethnicity, source of controls, and cancer type. CONCLUSION The results of this meta-analysis indicated that there is no association between the IL-10 -592 A/C promoter polymorphism and gastrointestinal tract cancer susceptibility.