Table 1. Characteristics of included trials.

Author /Year	Country	Ethnicity	Age group	Case (n)	Control (n)	Male/Female of ESRD (n)	Dialysis type	Genotyping method
Feussner/1992	Germany	Caucasian	Adults	560	1031	NA	HD	PCR
Eggertsen/1997	USA	Caucasian	Adults	51	407	25/26	CAPD	PCR
Olmer/1997	France	Caucasian	Adults	66	338	33/33	HD	PCR
Fumitake/1997	Japan	East Asians	Adults	97	173	58/39	HD	PCR
Kohlmeier/1998	Germany	Caucasian	Adults	219	1031	NA	HD	PCR
Choi/1999	Korea	East Asians	Adults	54	194	27/27	CAPD	PCR
Oda/1999	Japan	East Asians	Adults	485	576	NA	CAPD+HD	PCR- RFLP
Imura/1999	Japan	East Asians	Adults	493	422	287/206	HD	PCR
Guz/2000	Turkey	Caucasian	Adults	269	8366	154/115	HD	PCR
Jana/2002	Czech republic	Caucasian	Adults	87	67	53/34	HD	PCR- RFLP
Asakimori/2003	Japan	East Asians	Adults	163	576	85/78	HD	PCR
Roussos/2004	Sweden	Caucasian	Adults	385	407	220/165	CAPD+HD	PCR
Liberopoulos/2004	Greece	Caucasian	Adults	301	200	168/133	HD	PCR
Huang/2005	China	East Asians	Adults	94	108	54/40	CAPD+HD	PCR
Arikan/2007	Turkey	Caucasian	Adults	144	42	49/70	CAPD+HD	PCR
Fahad/2008	Saudi Arabia	Caucasian	Adults	42	50	NA	HD	PCR

CAPD: continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis; HD: hemodialysis; PCR, polymerase chain reaction; RFLP, restriction fragment length polymorphism; NA, not available.