Risk of inflammatory bowel disease associated with MTHFRC677T and prothrombin G20210A mutation: a meta-analysis

It has been demonstrated that inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients had a higher risk of thromboembolism, numerous observational studies have reported the prevalence of MTHFR C677T mutation and G20210A prothrombin mutation in patients with IBD. Whereas the magnitude of association between these two inherited thrombophilic abnormalities and IBD remains unknown. We conduct a meta-analysis to examine these two associations. The literature search was conducted using PubMed database, Odd ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated using randomor fixed-model. Finally, nineteen studies were included for MTHFR C677T mutation and fourteen studies were included for prothrombin G20210A mutation. No significant heterogeneity was found in the present analysis. As regards MTHFR C677T mutation, although no significantly increased IBD risk was found in the overall population (OR=1.06, 95% CI 1.07-1.17), subgroup analyses based on ethnicity suggested that MTHFR C677T mutation was associated with a slight increased risk of IBD in the Caucasian (OR=1.17, 95% CI 1.011.35) and Turkish population (OR=2.01, 95% CI 1.10-3.69). With respect to prothrombin G20210A mutation, not only the overall results (OR=0.66, 95% CI 0.65-1.50) but also the subgroup analyses showed no significant association was found between IBD and G20210A mutation. This meta-analysis indicated that MTHFR C677T mutation was significantly associated with the risk of IBD in Caucasian and Turkish population. No significant association was found between IBD and prothrombin G20210A mutation.