Genetic polymorphism of the kinesin-like protein KIF1B gene and the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Frequent deletions of the kinesin-like protein gene 1B (KIF1B) have been reported in neural tumors. Recently, a genome-wide association study revealed an association between polymorphisms in the KIF1B gene and the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and several case-control studies have further investigated this relationship. However, these studies have yielded controversial results. We therefore performed a meta-analysis to derive a more precise estimation of the association between the KIF1B gene polymorphisms and HCC risk.PubMed, EMBASE, the ISI Web of Science and the CNKI databases were systematically searched to identify relevant studies. A total of 5 studies containing 13 cohorts with 5,773 cases and 6,404 controls were included. Odds ratios (ORs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the strength of the associations. Subgroup analyses were conducted based on ethnicities, sample sizes and quality scores. Overall, the G allele at rs17401966 of the KIF1B gene was associated with a significantly decreased risk for HCC (OR = 0.81, 95%CI: 0.70-0.93; P = 0.003). Furthermore, subgroup analyses showed that the G allele at rs17401966 of the KIF1B gene significantly reduced the risk for HCC in Chinese cohorts (OR = 0.76, 95%CI: 0.64-0.90; P = 0.002), large-sample-size cohorts (OR = 0.80, 95%CI: 0.73-0.88, P