BackgroundThe association of interleukin-10 rs1800896 polymorphism with head and neck cancer risk and its clinical stages has been investigated by many published studies, but the results remain inconsistent. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis for further investigation.ResultsSix case-control studies involving 1,781 head and neck cancer patients and 1,978 controls were yielded. The results indicated an association between rs1800896 polymorphism and increased head and neck risk [odds ratio (95%confidence interval) for G vs. A, GA vs. AA, GG vs. AA, GA+GG vs. AA, and GG vs. AA + GA were 1.63 (1.30–2.04), 3.17 (2.11–4.76), 1.63 (1.17–2.26), 1.73 (1.25–2.39), and 2.73 (1.82–4.09), respectively]. The subgroup analyses all obtained similar results with overall populations. The results of clinical stages yielded a non-significant association. No publication bias was detected.Materials and MethodsThe PubMed and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases were searched up to December 27, 2016. Two authors independently selected studies, extracted and analyzed the data using the RevMan 5 software. Either a fixed effect or a random effect model was used to estimate pooled odds ratio and its 95% confidence intervals.ConclusionsWe concluded that interleukin-10 rs1800896 polymorphism was significantly associated with head and neck cancer risk but not with the clinical stages thereof.