Background: The cluster of differentiation antigen 14 (CD14) gene-159C/T polymorphism has been implied to be associated with coronary artery disease (CAD) susceptibility. However, the separate studies results are still conflicting between each other.
Objective and methods: To investigate the relationship between CD14 gene-159C/T polymorphism and CAD, a meta-analysis including 4467 subjects from 7 individual studies was performed. The random or fixed effect models were used to evaluate the pooled odds ratios (ORs) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals.
Results: There was a significant association between CD14 gene -159C/T polymorphism and CAD in the whole population under allelic (OR: 1.280, 95% CI: 1.000-1.630, P=0.05), recessive (OR: 1.760, 95% CI: 1.120-2.750, P=0.01), homozygous (OR: 1.693, 95% CI: 1.008-2.843, P=0.046), and additive genetic models (OR: 1.278, 95% CI: 1.000-1.633, P=0.050). No significant association was found between them under dominant (OR: 0.580, 95% CI: 0.310-1.110, P=0.10) and heterozygous genetic models (OR: 1.334, 95% CI: 0.870-2.045, P=0.186). In the subgroup analysis, a significant association was detected in Chinese population (P<0.05), while there was no significant association in the Caucasian subgroup (P>0.05).
Conclusions: CD14 gene -159C/T polymorphism was significantly associated with CAD susceptibility, particularly in the Chinese population. The person with T allele of CD14 gene -159C/T polymorphism might predispose to CAD. There was no distinct association between them in the Caucasian subgroup.
Keywords: -159C/T; CD14; coronary artery disease; polymorphism.