discs large homolog 5 (dlg5) gene polymorphism and crohn’s disease: a meta-analysis of the published studies

the real pathophysiology of crohn’s disease is unknown. the higher prevalence of crohn’s disease in caucasian and jewish ethnicities, as well as its familial aggregation and higher concordance among monozygotic twins, suggest some roles for genes in its development, clinical progression, and outcome. recent original studies have indicated dlg5113g/a gene polymorphism as a risk factor for crohn’s disease. meanwhile, the results of these studies are not consistent. we performed the current meta-analysis to understand whether there is any association between dlg5 gene polymorphism and the risk of crohn’s disease. pubmed was searched to find the case-control studies on dlg5 gene polymorphisms and crohn’s disease. this search compiled 65 articles and based on our criteria. 11 articles were included in this meta-analysis. the association between the dlg5 113g/a polymorphism and the risk of disease was assessed using odds ratio (or) and 95% confidence interval (95% ci). heterogeneity was evaluated based on i2 values.  random and fixed-effect models were used when i2>50% and i2≤50%, respectively. eleven studies with a total of 4648 cases and 5677 controls were pooled. based on our meta-analysis, dlg5113g/a gene polymorphism both at genotypic and allelic levels were not associated with the risk of crohn’s disease. pooled data indicated no significant association between dlg5113g/a gene polymorphism and the development of crohn’s disease. in order to achieve a superior conclusion, multicenter studies on larger number of patients are recommended.