Iranian Journal of

Background: In the last few years several polymorphisms variants with significant association to power and sprint performance of elite athletes have been verified. Meantime, the IL-6 gene was introduced as a proper candidate to imply a person alteration into an elite athlete. Therefore, the goal of the present study is to examine the association between IL6 gene polymorphism and power sport using meta-analysis to gather further evidence compared to individual reports.

Methods: Science direct, Google Scholar and Pub Med databases have been searched until March 2015. Articles were studied based on key word IL6 accompanied with polymorphism, mutation, variant and power sport were studied.  Statistical software STATA was used to analyze the data.

Results: Ten articles included into the final meta-analysis and Systematic review. The survey of the obtained data from the articles revealed that 292 persons were as an entire group of athletes and 559 people were as a control group. For the allele G vs. C 1.43odds ratio (95% confidence interval: 1.03 -1.99), for the allele GG vs. GC 1.74odds ratio (95% confidence interval: 1.28- 2.36), for the allele GG vs. GC + CC 1.71 odds ratio (95% confidence interval: 1.24 -2.36) and GG + GC vs. CC allele model 0.96 odds (95% confidence interval: 0.77-1.20) was revealed. The relationship between the polymorphism 1800795GG genotype and exercise can be statistically significant (P<0.05).

Conclusion: Generally, the result of the present study indicates that the IL6-174 G/C polymorphism is associated with better performance of elite athletes in power sports. The findings suggest that the genetic profiles might influence human physical performance. Therefore, it is recommended that researcher use IL6-174G/C polymorphism as one of the selected factor for Sports talent.