Different polymorphisms in HIF-1α may exhibit different effects on cancer risk in Asians: evidence from nearly forty thousand participants.

The effect of different SNPs in and cancer susceptibility remain indistinct. Here, we evaluated the association between all identified SNPs (rs11549465, rs11549467 and rs2057482) in and the overall risk of cancer in all case-control studies published before April 2020. A total of 54 articles including 56 case-control studies were included in this analysis. We found that variant genotypes of rs11549465 and rs11549467 were associated with a significantly increased overall cancer risk. In contrast, the variant T allele of rs2057482 showed a significantly reduced risk of overall cancer. In addition, variant genotypes of the three studied SNPs exhibited a significant association with cancer risk in Asians and specific cancer types. Meanwhile, was significantly highly expressed in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and pancreatic cancer tissues. More importantly, survival analysis indicated that the high expression of was associated with a poor survival in patients with lung cancer. These findings further provided evidence that different SNPs in may exhibit different effects on overall cancer risk; these effects were ethnicity and type-specific. Further studies with functional evaluations are required to confirm the biological mechanisms underlying the role of SNPs in cancer development and progression.