DNA Repair Gene XRCC1 Polymorphisms, Smoking, and Bladder Cancer Risk: A Meta-Analysis

The X-ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1) protein plays a crucial role in base excision repair (BER) pathway by acting as a scaffold for other BER enzymes. Variants in the XRCC1 gene might alter protein structure or function or create alternatively spliced proteins which may influence BER efficiency and hence affect individual susceptibility to bladder cancer. Recent epidemiological studies have shown inconsistent associations between these polymorphisms and bladder cancer. To clarify the situation, a comprehensive meta-analysis of all available studies was performed in this study.PubMed, EMBASE, and Chinese Biomedical Literature database (CBM) databases have been systematically searched to identify all relevant studies for the period up to February 2013. Data were abstracted independently by two reviewers and Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Subgroup analyses were performed mainly by ethnicity and smoking status.=0.008 for R280H, respectively).This meta-analysis suggests that the XRCC1 R399Q polymorphism may play a protective role against bladder cancer among smokers. However, the XRCC1 R194W and R280H polymorphisms were both associated with increased bladder cancer risk among Asians. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to validate our finds