Candidate gene association studies and risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

To evaluate the contribution of candidate gene association studies to the understanding of genetic susceptibility to childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies (January 1996-July 2009). Studies had to meet the following criteria: be case-control design, be studied by two or more studies, not be focused on HLA antigen genetic markers and be published in English. We identified 47 studies of polymorphic variation in 16 genes and acute lymphoblastic leukemia risk. To clarify the impact of individual polymorphisms on risk, pooled analyses were performed. Of the 25 polymorphic variants studied, significant associations (P0.2). While candidate gene analyses are complementary to genome-wide association studies, future analyses should be based on sample sizes commensurate with the detection of small effects and attention needs to be paid to study design.