Association between ABCB1 C3435T polymorphism and methotrexate treatment outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis patients: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Aim: This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between ABCB1 gene C3435T polymorphism and methotrexate treatment outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Methods: Seven electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane, OVID, Chinese biomedical literature [CBM], China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI] and Wanfang databases) were searched to select eligible publications until 18 July 2018. The references of relevant articles were also manually searched. The quality evaluation of the included studies was carried out according to the guidelines of the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale. Data were analyzed with Review Manager 5.3 and Stata 13.0 software. In total, 12 articles involving 2014 patients were included. Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that the ABCB1 gene C3435T polymorphism might be a reliable predictor of response to methotrexate in rheumatoid arthritis patients. However, well-designed, multicenter and large-scale prospective studies are required to further confirm the validity of our results.