“…Subsequently, 124 articles were excluded, and16 articles were examined closely for qualitative analysis. This resulted in elimination of 3 studies that had insufficient information; finally, 13 casecontrol studies were incorporated into this meta-analysis that contained a total of 7719 patients diagnosed with diverse diseases and 7094 healthy controls (Hitomi et al, 2009;Villani et al, 2009a,b;Roberts et al, 2010;Roberts et al, 2011;Ben Hamad et al, 2012;Carlstrom, 2012;Pontillo et al, 2012a,b;Ungerback, 2012;Kastbom et al, 2013;Pontillo et al, 2013;Varghese et al, 2013). The various diseases in the included studies were myocardial infarction, Alzheimer's disease, leprosy, ankylosing spondylitis, colorectal cancer (CRC), HIV-1 infection, systemic lupus erythematosus, malignant mesothelioma, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), ulcerative colitis (UC), Crohn's disease (CD), type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, and atopic dermatitis.…”