Abstract
BACKGROUND: +936C>T polymorphism of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is one of the most investigated polymorphisms, it has been suggested that it plays a vital role in tumorigenesis. Intensive studies centering on the association between VEGF +936C>T polymorphism and lung cancer risk or lung cancer patients' overall survival were conducted in recent years, but with inconclusive and ambiguous results. OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: We investigated whether VEGF +936C>T polymorphism influences lung cancer risk and lung cancer patients' overall survival (OS) using pooled odds ratios (ORs) and hazard ratios (HRs) with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) under different genetic models. RESULTS: A total of 12 eligible studies were included. In the overall analysis, we didn't find any statistical evidence that +936C>T polymorphism was related to the risk of lung cancer in any genetic model. However, increased lung cancer risk was detected in adenocarcinoma subgroup (OR=1.532, 95%CI: 1.016-2.312, P=0.042). For an aggregate result of survival analysis, +936C>T polymorphism was linked to an unfavorable OS (HR=2.248, 95%CI: 1.257-4.017, P=0.006) under homozygous model (TT/CC).