No clear consensus has been reached on the four single nucleotide polymorphisms (miR-196a2 gene rs11614913, miR-146a gene rs2910164, miR-149 gene rs2292832, and miR-499 gene rs3746444) in microRNA-coding genes and lung cancer risk.
We found that the microRNA-499 rs3746444T>C polymorphism exhibited a consistently poor prognosis for patients with lung cancer in the discovery set [HR, 1.24; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.02-1.49; P = 0.028], in the validation set I (HR, 1.31; 95% CI, 1.01-1.71; P = 0.048) and in the validation set II (HR, 1.45; 95% CI, 1.12-1.86; P = 0.004).
Subgroup analysis based on type of tumor was also performed, miR-499rs3746444 is associated with susceptibility of cervical squamous cell carcinoma, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma.