Table I.

Characteristics of studies included in the meta-analysis

First author	Year	Country	Ethnicity	Genotyping method	Genotypes for cases			Genotypes for controls			HWE test
					BB	Bb	bb	BB	Bb	bb
Berg	1996	Norway	European	RFLP	4	8	7	8	11	11	0.16
Vandevyver	1997	Belgium	European	RFLP	12	50	24	127	368	203	0.08
Gomez	1999	Spain	European	RFLP	13	38	25	38	109	89	0.63
Valimaki	2001	Finland	European	RFLP	44	175	153	20	55	36	0.90
Douroudis	2003	Greece	European	RFLP	3	12	20	10	29	5	0.03
Garnero	2005	France	European	RFLP	50	124	66	40	162	147	0.64
Horst-Sikorska	2007	Poland	European	RFLP	10	35	40	33	85	73	0.34
Zhu	2004	China	Asian	RFLP	6	26	8	7	105	46	0.00
Mitra	2006	India	Asian	TKM method	19	38	40	51	46	22	0.05
Ge	2009	China	Asian	RFLP	6	33	314	4	12	192	0.00

RFLP – Restriction fragment length polymorphism.