It has been demonstrated that polymorphisms within inflammation-related genes are associated with risk of gastric carcinoma in Helicobacter pylori-infected individuals. Recently, several studies have reported conflicting results regarding the association between the interleukin (IL)8-251*T/*A polymorphism and risk of gastric carcinoma. In this study, we performed a case-control analysis, including 693 controls, 187 chronic gastritis cases and 333 gastric carcinoma cases, to determine the association between the IL8-251 polymorphism and risk of chronic gastritis and gastric carcinoma in the northern Portugal population. We found no significant association between the IL8-251 polymorphism and increased risk of chronic gastritis or gastric carcinoma, in agreement with that reported in other populations of white origin. The retrospective analysis of published data shows that the association between the IL8-251 polymorphism and risk of gastric carcinoma tends to be reproducible in populations of Asian origin. The estimated effect of the polymorphism under analysis was not significantly different in subgroups of gastric carcinoma cases defined by histologic type and anatomic site of the tumours, and by sex and age of the participants. In conclusion our results indicate that although the IL8-251 polymorphism might be a relevant host susceptibility factor for gastric carcinoma development, this association is likely to be ethnic-specific.