Background: The aim of the meta-analysis was to derive a more precise assessment of the association between p16 promoter methylation and thyroid cancer risk.
Materials and methods: The PubMed, Web of Science databases and Chinese CNKI were searched for relevant articles. Ultimately, seventeen case-control studies were included with a total of 804 thyroid cancer cases and 487 controls analysis by R Software (R version 3.1.2) including meta. Crude odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were calculated using the random-effects model which were used to assess the strength of relationship between p16 methylation and lung carcinogenesis. Funnel plots were carried out to evaluate publication bias.
Results: The meta-analysis results showed that the frequency of p16 promoter methylation in cancer tissue/blood was significantly higher than that normal tissue/ blood (OR=5.46, 95%CI 3.12-9.55, P<0.0001) by random effects model with small heterogeneity.
Conclusions: Thus, p16 promoter methylation may be associated with thyroid cancer risk.