Introduction:
Several articles have examined the relationship of IL-4 receptor gene (IL-4R) polymorphisms with asthma, yet the results remain inconsistent. This may be attributed to the small sample sizes and polymorphism’s small effect size that fail to offer potent statistical power. Therefore, this meta-analysis on related studies was aimed at analyzing how IL-4R Q576R polymorphisms affected the asthma susceptibility.

Material and methods:
Databases including Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar, CNKI and EMBASE were systematically searched for retrieving pertinent studies. Odds ratios (ORs) and the relevant 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were also calculated.

Results:
Collectively, 12 eligible articles involving 1553 patients and 1904 normal subjects were subjected to analysis. There was no distinct relationship between IL-4R Q576R polymorphism and asthma susceptibility, in the entire study population (R vs Q: OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 0.98–1.59; RQ vs QQ: OR = 1.21, 95% CI = 0.98–1.49; RR vs QQ: OR = 1.47, 95% CI = 0.80–2.71; the recessive model: OR = 1.38, 95% CI = 0.80–2.40; the dominant model: OR = 1.25, 95% CI = 0.98–1.60). Subgroup analysis, conducted based on ethnicity and study population, revealed no obvious interrelation.

Conclusions:
Our findings demonstrated no relationship between IL-4R Q576R polymorphism and asthma susceptibility. More well-designed and large-scale studies are needed to validate the above findings.