No association between XRCC1 gene Arg194Trp polymorphism and risk of lung cancer: evidence based on an updated cumulative meta-analysis

X-ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1) gene Arg194Trp polymorphism has been reported to be associated with risk of lung cancer in many published studies. Nevertheless, the research results were inconclusive and conflicting. To reach conclusive results, several meta-analysis studies were conducted by combining results from literature reports through pooling analysis. However, these previous meta-analysis studies were still not consistent. Hence, we used an updated and cumulative meta-analysis to get a more comprehensive and precise result from 25 case–control studies searching through the PubMed database up to September 1, 2013. The meta-analysis was carried out by the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software and the odds ratio (OR) with 95 % confidence interval (CI) was used to estimate the pooled effect. The result involving 8,876 lung cancer patients and 11,210 controls revealed that XRCC1 Arg194Trp polymorphism was not associated with lung cancer risk [(OR = 0.97, 95 %CI = 0.92–1.03) for Trp vs. Arg; (OR = 0.92, 95 % CI = 0.85–0.98) for ArgTrp vs. ArgArg; (OR = 1.07, 95 % CI = 0.92–1.23) for TrpTrp vs. ArgArg; (OR = 0.93, 95 % CI = 0.87–1.00) for (TrpTrp + ArgTrp) vs. ArgArg; and (OR = 1.08, 95 % CI = 0.94–1.25) for TrpTrp vs. (ArgTrp + ArgArg)]. The cumulative meta-analysis showed that the results maintained the same, while the ORs with 95 % CI were more stable with the accumulation of case–control studies. The sensitivity and subgroups analyses showed that the results were robust and not affected by any single study with no publication bias. Relevant studies might not be needed for supporting these results.