The risk of atopic dermatitis may be affected by +3954 C/T and -137G/C polymorphisms: evidence from a meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION

Whether Th1-related cytokine polymorphisms influence the risk of atopic dermatitis (AD) remain inconclusive.

AIM

The authors performed a meta-analysis to robustly explore relationships between Th1-related cytokine polymorphisms and the risk of AD by merging the results of eligible publications.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The authors strictly adhere to the PRISMA guidelines in study design and implementation. A thorough literature search in Medline, Embase, Wanfang, VIP and CNKI was performed by the authors to identify eligible publications. Relationships between α/// polymorphisms and the risk of AD were estimated with odds ratio and its 95% confidence interval. The statistically significant p value was set at 0.05. The quality of eligible publications was assessed by the Newcastle-Ottawa scale (NOS).

RESULTS

In total twenty-one publications with a NOS score of 7-8 were selected for merged quantitative analyses. We have noticed that genotypic frequencies of +3954 C/T and -137G/C polymorphisms among cases with AD and population-based controls differed significantly. Moreover, we have found that genotypic frequency of +3954 C/T polymorphism among cases with AD and population-based controls of Caucasian origin differed significantly, and genotypic frequency of -137G/C polymorphism among cases with AD and population-based controls of both Caucasian and Asian origins also differed significantly. However, we did not observe such genotypic distribution differences for α -238 G/A, α -308 G/A, -889 C/T, - C/T and -174 G/C polymorphisms.

CONCLUSIONS

The present meta-analysis shows that +3954 C/T and -137G/C polymorphisms may affect the risk of AD.