MicroRNA biogenesis pathway genes polymorphisms and cancer risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Jieyu He; Jun Zhao; Wenbo Zhu; Daxun Qi; Lina Wang; Jinfang Sun; Bei Wang; Xu Ma; Qiaoyun Dai; Xiaojin Yu

doi:10.7717/peerj.2706

MicroRNA biogenesis pathway genes polymorphisms and cancer risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis

PeerJ. 2016 Dec 7:4:e2706. doi: 10.7717/peerj.2706. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Jieyu He^#¹, Jun Zhao^#^{2

3}, Wenbo Zhu¹, Daxun Qi², Lina Wang¹, Jinfang Sun¹, Bei Wang¹, Xu Ma^{2

3}, Qiaoyun Dai², Xiaojin Yu¹

Affiliations

¹ Southeast University, Department of Public Health, Nanjing, China.
² National Research Institute for Family Planning, Beijing, China.
³ Graduate School of Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) may promote the development and progression of human cancers. Therefore, components of the miRNA biogenesis pathway may play critical roles in human cancer. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or mutations in genes involved in the miRNA biogenesis pathway may alter levels of gene expression, affecting disease susceptibility. Results of previous studies on genetic variants in the miRNA biogenesis pathway and cancer risk were inconsistent. Therefore, a meta-analysis is needed to assess the associations of these genetic variants with human cancer risk. We searched for relevant articles from PubMed, Web of Science, CNKI, and CBM through Jun 21, 2016. In total, 21 case-control articles met all of the inclusion criteria for the study. Significant associations were observed between cancer risk and the DGCR8polymorphism rs417309 G >A (OR 1.22, 95% CI [1.04-1.42]), as well as the DICER1 polymorphism rs1057035 TT (OR 1.13, 95% CI [1.05-1.22]). These SNPs exhibit high potential as novel diagnostic markers. Future studies with larger sample sizes and more refined analyses are needed to shed more light on these findings.

Keywords: Cancer risk; Meta-analysis; MicroRNA biogenesis.

Grants and funding

The study was funded by National Population and Reproductive Health Information Center, National Natural Science Foundation of China (81673274). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.