Lack of associations between rs2910164 and rs11614913 polymorphisms and the risk of ischemic stroke.

Emerging evidence suggests that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in microRNA genes may play a role in the development of cerebrovascular diseases including ischemic stroke through functionally modulating the expression of microRNA target genes. However, the current studies regarding the associations of the common microRNA polymorphisms with susceptibility to ischemic stroke have obtained discrepant results, which prompted us to perform a meta-analysis for a more precise estimation of the concerned associations. Relevant studies evaluating the associations between two common polymorphisms (miR-146a rs2910164 and miR-196a2 rs11614913) and the risk of ischemic stroke were retrieved from the PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Chinese Wanfang, Chinese Biomedical Database, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases. The odds ratio (OR) with its 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were pooled to assess the strength of the associations using RevMan 5.2 and Stata 12.0 software. A total of 5 case-control studies with 2069 cases and 2061 controls on rs2910164, 4 case-control studies with 1873 cases and 1856 controls on rs11614913 polymorphisms were enrolled in the meta-analysis. Overall, neither allele frequency nor genotype distribution of the two common polymorphisms was found to be associated with risk for ischemic stroke in all genetic models. The subgroup analysis revealed a significant association between miR-146a rs2910164 polymorphism and increased risk of ischemic stroke in large sample size group and in Koreans under homozygous, allele, dominant and recessive models. The present meta-analysis suggests that the two common polymorphisms (rs2910164, rs11614913) may not contribute to the susceptibility to ischemic stroke. However, more well-designed studies with large sample size are warranted to further validate the results in different ethnicities.