We performed the Meta-analysis to better investigate the association between-574 G>T genetic polymorphism of T cells immunoglobulin domain and mucin domain protein-3(TIM-3) and bronchial asthma(asthma) susceptibility in Chinese Han population.

Eligible case-control studies were searched from Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI), WanFang Database, SinoMed, Pubmed, Embase and Web of Science up to December. 20th 2017. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the potential association between-574 G>T variant of TIM-3 gene and asthma in dominant model by RevMan 5.3. This software was also used to perform sensitivity analysis and subgroup analysis. Additionally, publish bias can be well assessed by Stata 12.0.

A total of five articles containing 1 241 asthma patients and 1 005 control subjects were included in our study. The risk of developing asthma in Asian population carried GT genotype is 306% higher than those who carried GG wild-type(OR=4.06, 95%CI: 2.34, 7.05). T allele carriers had a 331% increased risk to develop asthma compared with G allele carriers(OR=4.31, 95%CI: 2.50, 7.43). The result of subgroup analysis showed that both adults and children with GT genotype were more vulnerable to asthma than GG wild-type carriers(children group: OR=4.07, 95%CI: 1.62, 10.20; adults group: OR=3.09, 95%CI: 1.40, 6.85).

TIM-3-574 G>T polymorphism was associated with asthma susceptibility in Chinese Han population. T allele carriers had higher risk to develop asthma than wild-type carriers.