Association between COX-2 rs2745557 polymorphism and prostate cancer risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Evidence is accumulating that chronic inflammation may have an important role in prostate cancer (PCa). The COX-2 polymorphism rs2745557 (+202 C/T) has been extensively investigated as a potential risk factor for PCa, but the results have thus far been inconclusive. This meta-analysis was performed to derive a more precise estimation of the association.

A comprehensive search was conducted to identify all case-control studies of COX-2 rs2745557 polymorphism and PCa risk. We used odds ratios (ORs) to assess the strength of the association, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) give a sense of the precision of the estimate. Statistical analyses were performed by Review Manage, version 5.0 and Stata 10.0.

A total of 8 available studies were considered in the present meta-analysis, with 11356 patients and 11641 controls for rs2745557. When all groups were pooled, there was no evidence that rs2745557 had significant association with PCa under co-dominant, recessive, over-dominant, and allelic models. However, our analysis suggested that rs2745557 was associated with a lower PCa risk under dominant model in overall population (OR=0.85, 95%CI=0.74-0.97, P=0.02). When stratifying for race, there was a significant association between rs2745557 polymorphism and lower PCa risk in dominant model comparison in the subgroup of Caucasians (OR=0.86, 95%CI=0.75-0.99, P=0.04), but not in co-dominant, recessive, over-dominant and allelic comparisons.

Based on our meta-analysis, COX-2 rs2745557 was associated with a lower PCa risk under dominant model in Caucasians.