PLoS ONE (Jan 2014)

CASP8 -652 6N del polymorphism contributes to colorectal cancer susceptibility: evidence from a meta-analysis.

  • Qiliu Peng,
  • Xianjun Lao,
  • Weizhong Tang,
  • Zhiping Chen,
  • Ruolin Li,
  • Jian Wang,
  • Yan Deng,
  • Taijie Li,
  • Xue Qin,
  • Shan Li

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087925
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 2
p. e87925

Abstract

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OBJECTIVE: Caspase-8 (CASP8) plays a central role in the apoptotic pathway and aberrant regulation of this pathway may cause cancers. Previous studies investigating the association between CASP8 -652 6N ins/del polymorphism and colorectal cancer (CRC) risk showed inconclusive results. We performed a meta-analysis of all available studies to investigate this association. METHODS: All studies published up to October 2013 on the association between CASP8 -652 6N ins/del polymorphism and CRC risk were identified by searching electronic databases PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane library. The association between CASP8 -652 6N ins/del polymorphism and CRC risk was assessed by odds ratios (ORs) together with their 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: Six studies with 6,325 cases and 6,842 controls were included in the meta-analysis. We observed that the CASP8 -652 6N ins/del polymorphism was significantly correlated with CRC risk when all studies were pooled into the meta-analysis (ins/del vs. ins/ins: OR = 0.890, 95%CI 0.821-0.964, P = 0.004; del/del + ins/del vs. ins/ins: OR = 0.899, 95%CI 0.833-0.970, P = 0.006). In stratified analyses by ethnicity, source of control, and quality score, significant association was observed in Asians (ins/del vs. ins/ins: OR = 0.862, 95%CI 0.761-0.977, P = 0.020; del/del + ins/del vs. ins/ins: OR = 0.845, 95%CI 0.749-0.953, P = 0.006), population-based studies (ins/del vs. ins/ins: OR = 0.890, 95%CI 0.813-0.975, P = 0.012; del/del + ins/del vs. ins/ins: OR = 0.901, 95%CI 0.827-0.982, P = 0.018), and high quality studies. However, in subgroup analysis according to cancer location, no significant association was detected. CONCLUSIONS: The present meta-analysis suggests that the CASP8 is a candidate gene for CRC susceptibility. The CASP8 -652 6N ins/del polymorphism may play a protective role in CRC development especially among Asians. Further large and well-designed studies are needed to confirm this association.