Background and objective: An increasing number of investigations are drawing attention to the relationship between polymorphisms in the HOTAIR gene and the risk of cancers, but the results obtained so far have been controversial and inconclusive. We performed an up-to-date meta-analysis to obtain a more precise estimate of the possible associations.
Methods: Crude odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to evaluate the strength of the associations.
Results: Nine publications including 26 case-control studies comprising 37,900 individuals were enrolled for the 5 polymorphisms in HOTAIR. The overall analyses identified a significant association between the rs920778 polymorphism and increased susceptibility to cancer in homozygous and recessive models. We conducted a stratification analysis by cancer type and identified a significantly increased susceptibility to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in all the genetic models and to gastric cancer in the dominant model. For the rs7958904 polymorphism we detected a significantly decreased susceptibility to overall cancer in all 5 genetic models rather than the heterogeneous model. However, no significant association was identified between the rs874945, rs4759314 and rs1899663 polymorphisms and cancer susceptibility.
Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that the HOTAIR rs920778 polymorphism may represent a risk factor for cancer, whereas the rs7958904 polymorphism may play a protective role.