“…On the basis of the search rules, a total of 83 articles were initially identified. Further application of our inclusion/exclusion criteria yielded 9 articles (Simmons et al, 2000;Martin et al, 2002;Dresner-Pollak et al, 2004;Naderi et al, 2008;Noble et al, 2008;Pluskiewicz et al, 2009;Bentley et al, 2011;Hughes et al, 2011;Pei et al, 2011), which included 1666 cases of ulcerative colitis (UC) cases, 1796 cases of CD, and 2647 controls; these 9 articles were involved in this meta-analysis. There were 6 studies on ApaI (Simmons et al, 2000;Naderi et al, 2008;Noble et al, 2008;Pluskiewicz et al, 2009;Hughes et al, 2011;Pei et al, 2011), 5 on BsmI (Dresner-Pollak et al, 2004;Naderi et al, 2008;Pluskiewicz et al, 2009;Hughes et al, 2011;Pei et al, 2011) and FokI (Simmons et al, 2000;Naderi et al, 2008;Hughes et al, 2011;Pei et al, 2011;Bentley et al, 2011), and 8 on TaqI (Simmons et al, 2000;Martin et al, 2002;Naderi et al, 2008;Noble et al, 2008;Pluskiewicz et al, 2009Hughes et al, 2011Pei et al, 2011;Bentley et al, 2011) …”