Association between the FTOrs8050136 polymorphism and cancer risk: a meta-analysis

A meta-analysis on cancer risk relevant to FTOrs8050136 polymorphism. To investigate the comprehensive effect of FTOrs8050136 polymorphism on cancer risk based on a pooled result. Carcinogenesis is closely related to obesity. Both obesity and cancer share common pathogenic factors such as hereditary susceptibility and environmental predisposition. Recently, several studies had reported that the FTOrs8050136 polymorphism, a genetic variation highly associated with obesity, can be a potential cancer risk factor, while these results were inconsistent. With the help of PubMed, EMBASE, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure considerable research was done for potential studies without language restriction. Pooled odds ratio combined with 95 % confidence interval was employed to evaluate the potential correlations, and subgroup analyses were performed based on the cancer types and ethnic populations. There were eight articles comprising 21,810 cases and 85,070 controls met the eligibility criteria. Overall, there was no significant association between the FTOrs8050136 polymorphism and cancer risk (P = 0.163). Subgroup analysis illustrated that no association existed between the FTOrs8050136 polymorphism and cancer risk in Caucasians (P = 0.809), Asians (P = 0.412) and the mixed population (P = 0.093). With regard to cancer types, the result suggested that the FTOrs8050136 polymorphism had no connection with pancreatic cancer (P = 0.089), endometrial cancer (P = 0.353), prostate cancer (P = 0.578), colorectal cancer (P = 0.054) and melanoma (P = 0.357), while the inverse result was obtained in the subgroup of papillary thyroid cancer (P = 0.010). The FTOrs8050136 polymorphism may be not associated with carcinogenesis apart from papillary thyroid cancer, and further studies are needed to investigate the potential correlation.