Purpose Reported associations of allograft rejection in kidney transplant patients with VEGF single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been inconsistent between studies, which prompted a meta-analysis to obtain more precise estimates.

Methods Using the PICO elements, kidney transplant patients (P) were compared by genotype data between rejectors (I) and non-rejectors (C) in order to determine the risk of allograft rejection (O) attributed to the VEGF SNPs. Literature search of four databases yielded seven articles. To calculate risks for allograft rejection, four SNPs were examined. Meta-analysis treatments included outlier and subgroup analyses, the latter was based on ethnicity (Indians/Caucasians) and rejection type (acute/chronic). Multiple comparisons were corrected with the Bonferroni test.

Results Five highly significant outcomes (P^a < 0.01) survived Bonferroni correction, one of which showed reduced risk for the var allele (OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.45-0.82). The remaining four indicated increased risk for the wt allele where the chronic rejection (OR 2.10, 95% CI 1.36-3.24) and Indian (OR 1.44, 95% CI 1.13-1.84) subgroups were accorded susceptibility status.

Conclusions Risk associations for renal allograft rejection were increased and reduced on account of the wt and var alleles, respectively. These findings could render the VEGF polymorphisms useful in the clinical genetics of kidney transplantation.

From published articles

Genetics of renal transplantation.

There are no missing values.

VEGF dataset used to generate summary effects and confidence intervals for the figures and tables of the manuscript

 VEGF: vascular endothelial growth factor polymorphisms; AR: acute rejection; CR: chronic rejection; SNPs: single nucleotide               

polymorphisms; wt: wild-type; var: variant; du: duplicate

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