Background: Polymorphisms of genes participating in iron transportation have been associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk. The association between transferrin (TF) gene rs1049296 (P570S) polymorphism and AD is controversial.
Methods: We performed meta analysis on data from 19 studies with 6310 cases and 13661 controls to reexamine the association between the TF gene rs1049296 polymorphism and AD. We applied a fixed-effects model to combine the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Egger's test was carried out to evaluate the potential publication bias.
Results: The overall ORs with 95% CIs showed statistical association between the TF gene rs1049296 polymorphism and the risk of AD in the allele contrast, the recessive model and the dominant model for allele C2 (fixed-effects pooled OR 1.11; 95% CI 1.05 to 1.17, pooled OR 1.13; 95% CI 1.06 to 1.21, and pooled OR 1.23; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.47, respectively). In the contrast of C2C2+C2C1 vs C1C1, large heterogeneity among the Asian subgroup (p=0.041, I2= 68.6%) was observed but not among the overall population (p = 0.184, I2= 22.4%). No publication bias was observed.
Conclusions: The present meta analysis demonstrated that TF gene rs1049296 polymorphism is a genetic determinant of AD.