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Background
Studies showed that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays an important role in the development and progress of diabetic retinopathy (DR), and the association between VEGF-2578C/A polymorphism(SNPs) and risk for DR is a hotspot.
Objective
This Meta analysis aimed to investigate the comprehensive and reliable conclusion in the association of VEGF-2578C/A SNPs and risk for DR in different races.
Methods
A systematic search of electronic databases including PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMbase, VIP, Wanfang technological, CNKI and reference lists of relevant articles was carried out until April, 2014.Case-control studies on the relationship between VEGF-2578C/A SNPs and DR were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the relevance of VEGF-2578C allele to DR, the relevance of VEGF-2578C/A SNPs to DR and the relevance of VEGF-2578A allele to Caucasian DR were quantitatively analyzed.Begger funnel plot of publication biases on the relationships of VEGF SNPs with the risk of DR under the allele and dominant models was drown.RevMan 5.0 software was used for the statistical analysis.The pooled odds ratio (OR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to assess the strength of the association.
Results
A total of 1 228 DR cases and 1 224 diabetes controls without retinopathy(DWR) were included from 8 independent studies (9 groups of data).A significant relationships between VEGF-2578A allelic gene and VEGF-2578AA gene type with DR were found in all samples, and the A allelic gene and AA gene type were the risk genes of DR (A versus C:OR=1.39, 95% CI=1.08-1.80, Z=2.52, P=0.01;AA versus CC+C/A:OR=1.53, 95% CI=1.05-2.24, Z=2.20, P=0.03;CC versus AA+C/A:OR=0.70, 95% CI=0.50-0.98, Z=2.10, P=0.04).When the other two studies which did not meet the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium were incorporated in a sensitivity analysis, the results were not materially altered.VEGF-2578 A allelic gene was the risk gene to Europeans with DR (OR=1.50, 95% CI=1.02-2.21, Z=2.07, P=0.04), but not among Asians in subgroup analysis (P>0.05).No significant publication bias was found.
Conclusions
The Meta analysis demonstrates that VEGF-2578C/A is associated with DR in Europeans but not in Asians. Further case-control studies based on larger sample size are still needed, especially in Asians.