Single nucleotide polymorphisms of MIR-149 gene rs2292832 contributes to the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma, but not overall cancer: a meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION: Single nucleotide polymorphism in miRNAs can alter its expression, thus can lead to the development of cancers. Numerous studies have explored the association between MIR-149 gene rs2292832 polymorphism and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) risk, but the results remains inconsistent. So, we performed this pooled analyses in order to get a precise result. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: Odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI), calculated by STATA software, was used to determine whether MIR-149 gene rs2292832 polymorphism contributes to the risk of HCC. A comprehensive literature search was conducted on Medline (mainly PubMed), Cochrane Library database, Web of science and the China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI) up to March 22, 2016. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: A total of 19 studies including 8201 cases and 9294 controls were included in this meta analysis. Four of 20 studies related to the HCC risk. When all the eligible studies were pooled into this meta-analysis, a significant association between MIR-149 gene rs2292832 polymorphism and hepatocellular carcinoma risk was found, while no association was found between this gene polymorphism and overall cancer risk. CONCLUSIONS: Our meta-analysis supports that the MIR-149 gene rs2292832 polymorphism contributed to the risk of HCC from currently available evidence. However, a study with a larger sample size is needed to further evaluate gene environment interaction on MIR-149 gene rs2292832 polymorphism and HCC risk.