Genetic association of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene variants with the risk for diabetic retinopathy: a meta-analysis

Abstract

The vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) significantly contributes to the manifestation of neovascularization in the retina which progressively develops retinopathy in diabetic patients. The aim of this study was to assess the role of VEGF polymorphisms in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy (DR). This meta-analysis comprised a total of six case-control and cohort studies published in the last 6 years. The selection of studies was done by sorting in reliable database searches: NCBI, Ensemble, GenBank, Embase, UCSC Genome Browser. After the extraction of data, the Q test of heterogeneity was performed. The Stata Software version 13.1 was used as the statistical package. Fixed and random effect models were applied for forest plot depiction while funnel plot and Egger’s test were carried out for the evaluation of publication bias. A significant relationship was found between the risk allele of VEGF polymorphism rs3025039 with predisposition of DR (OR = 1.45, 95%CI = 1.04–1.86) in the absence of heterogeneity by three studies. Furthermore, significant association was also observed for four polymorphisms of VEGF (rs833061, s13207351, rs1570360, and rs2010963) with higher susceptibility of DR among the population of Pakistan (OR = 1.46, 95%CI = 1.21–1.71). The meta-analysis suggested the substantial role of VEGF polymorphism rs3025039 as a possible biomarker for the assessment of DR risk. However, genome-wide association study (GWAS) is required in future to elucidate the multi-SNP effect of these polymorphisms in VEGF gene.