Tumor Necrosis Factor-α-308 G/A Polymorphisms and Risk of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Meta-Analysis

Context: hepatocellular carcinoma (hcc) is a common disorder throughout the world that can develop due to various factors, including genetics. tumor necrosis factor-α (tnf-α) is the most frequently studied cytokine related to the risk of developing hcc, and an association between the 308 position of the tnf-α promoter (tnf-α-308) and hcc risk has been confirmed in various reports. evidence acquisition: the pubmed, scopus, and google scholar databases were searched through july 12, 2015, for studies on associations between tnf-α-308 and the risk of hcc. to determine this association, odds ratios (ors) and 95% confidence intervals (95% cis) were calculated. results: a total of 23 case-control studies were investigated, involving 3,389 cases and 4,235 controls. the overall conclusion was that the a allele was more frequent in case groups compared to control groups (13.4% vs. 8.4%). thus, the a allele was significantly associated with increased hcc risk (or = 1.77; 95% ci = [1.26-2.50]; p value < 0.002). in addition to the allelic model, the dominant model (aa + ag vs. gg) was significantly associated with hcc risk (or = 1.80; ci = [1.29-2.51]; p value < 0.001). in the sensitivity analysis for co-dominant (aa vs. gg) and recessive models (aa vs. ag + gg), no trustworthy associations with the risk of hcc development were observed. conclusions: this meta-analysis indicated that the tnf-α-308 g/a polymorphism is significantly associated with increased susceptibility to hcc. however, to confirm this finding, more studies are needed on tnf-α-308 g/a polymorphisms associated with hcc.