We also found that there were two studies that deviated from HWE in this subset; further pooled results after excluding them indicated that the ERCC1 rs11615 polymorphism still increased the breast cancer risk under the heterozygote model (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.05–1.48, P=0.013) and dominant model (OR = 1.20, 95% CI = 1.02–1.42, P=0.03) (Table 2 and Figure 3). This evidence concerns the gene ERCC1 and breast cancer.