ABSTRACT: Meat intake is associated with the risk of colorectal cancer. The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate interactions between meat intake and genetic variation in order to identify biological pathways involved in meat carcinogenesis. We performed a literature search of PubMed and Embase using "interaction", "meat", "polymorphisms", and "colorectal cancer", and data on meat-gene interactions were extracted. The studies were divided according to whether information on meat intake was collected prospectively or retrospectively. In prospective studies, interactions between meat intake and polymorphisms in PTGS2 (encoding COX-2), ABCB1, IL10, NFKB1, MSH3, XPC (P int = 0.006, 0.01, 0.04, 0.03, 0.002, 0.01, respectively), but not IL1B, HMOX1, ABCC2, ABCG2, NR1I2 (encoding PXR), NR1H2
