Association between genetic polymorphisms of interleukins and cerebral infarction risk: a meta-analysis

Interleukins (ILs) are the most typical inflammatory and immunoregulatory cytokines. Evidences have shown that polymorphisms in ILs are associated with cerebral infarction risk. However, the results remain inconclusive. The present study was to evaluate the role of ILs polymorphisms in cerebral infarction susceptibility. Relevant case-control studies published between January 2000 and December 2015 were searched and retrieved from the electronic databases of Web of Science, PubMed, Embase and the Chinese Biomedical Database. The odds ratio (OR) with its 95% confidence interval (CI) were employed to calculate the strength of association. A total of 55 articles including 12619 cerebral infarction patients and 14436 controls were screened out. Four ILs (IL-1, IL-6, IL-10 and IL-18) contained nine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; IL-1α -899C/T, IL-1β -511C/T and IL-1β +3953C/T; IL-6 -174G/C and -572C/G; IL-10 -819C/T and -1082A/G; IL-18 -607C/A and -137G/C). Our result showed that IL-1α -899C/T and IL-18 -607C/A (under all the genetic models), and IL-6 -572C/G (under the allelic model, heterogeneity model and dominant model) were associated with increased the risk of cerebral infarction (