Meta-analysis of the relationship between excision repair cross-complementing Group 5 rs17655 gene polymorphism and head and neck cancer susceptibility.

Background: Published studies have evaluated the association between excision repair cross-complementing Group 5 (ERCC5) rs17655 polymorphism and head and neck cancer (HNC) susceptibility. However, these studies showed inconsistent results.

Aims: The aim of this study was to get a more comprehensive estimation of this association.

Materials and Methods: Multiple databases were searched for the genetic association on the ERCC5 rs17655 polymorphism and HNC risk. Ten studies with a total of 3922 cases and 5871 controls were finally identified to be eligible studies in this meta-analysis. Odds ratio with 95% confidence intervals was used to assess the strength of association.

Results: Overall, this meta-analysis showed that there was no association between ERCC5 rs17655 polymorphism and HNC risk under all five genetic models. Further, no significant associations between the ERCC5 rs17655 polymorphism and HNC risk were found under the five genetic models in subgroup analyses based on the source of control. However, in stratified analyses by ethnicity, a significant association was found under the homozygous and recessive models in European.

Conclusions: Our investigations demonstrate that genotypes for the ERCC5 rs17655 polymorphism may be not associated with overall cancer risk. In a subgroup meta-analysis, the results suggest that the ERCC5 rs17655 polymorphism is probably associated with HNC risk in European, but the results should be interpreted with caution for the low number of studies.