Purpose: The hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF1A) plays a vital role in cancer initiation and progression. Previous studies have reported the existence of HIF1A P582S and A588T missense polymorphisms in renal, urothelial and prostatic carcinomas, however the effects remain conflicting. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to assess the association between these sites and the susceptibility of urinary cancers.
Methods: We searched the PubMed database without limits on language until Nov 25, 2012 for studies exploring the relationship of HIF1A P582S and A588T polymorphisms and urinary cancers. Still, article search was supplemented by screening the references of retrieved studies manually. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated to evaluate the strength of the associations between the two by RevMan 5.0 software. Simultaneously, publication bias was estimated by funnel plot and Begg's test with Stata 12.1 software.
Results: Overall, 11 individual case-control studies with 5195 cases and 5786 controls for P582S polymorphism, and 9 studies with 3482 cases and 4304 controls for A588T polymorphism were respectively included in the final meta-analysis. For HIF1A P582S polymorphism, individuals with TT genotype showed 1.60 fold higher risk than the others carrying CT or CC genotypes in Caucasian population (OR = 1.60, 95% CI = 1.09-2.33, P(heterogeneity )= 0.11, P = 0.02). For HIF1A A588T polymorphism, the A allele was significantly correlated with higher urinary cancers risk in Asian population (OR = 1.41, 95% CI = 1.03-1.93, P(heterogeneity) = 0.22, P = 0.03). Still, significant associations were found for prostate cancer in the allele and dominant models (OR = 1.46, 95% CI = 1.01-2.12, P(heterogeneity )= 0.49, P = 0.04 and OR = 1.45, 95% CI = 1.00-2.12, P(heterogeneity) = 0.50, P = 0.05).
Conclusions: The current findings suggest that HIF1A P582S polymorphism correlates with urinary cancers risk in Caucasian population, while A588T polymorphism may increase the risk of urinary cancers in Asian population and prostate cancer.