Numerous epidemiological studies have studied the association of adiponectin (ADIPOQ) gene and adiponectin receptor (ADIPOR) gene polymorphisms with risk of colorectal cancer (CRC),but the outcomes were incomplete and inconsistent.Therefore,we conducted a meta-analysis to assess the associations systematically.All eligible case-control studies published up to Jan.2015 were searched from PubMed,the Cochrane library,Elsevier,Wiley Online library,China National Knowledge Infrastructure,WanFang data and Chongqing VIP.Effect sizes of odds ratio (OR) and 95％ confidence interval (95％CI) were calculated by using a fixed-or random-effect model.Twelve case-control studies including 6141 cases and 7398 controls were selected.Significant differences in the distributions of allele frequency with CRC risk were directly present in ADIPOQ variants rs2241766,rs1501299 and ADIPOR variant rs1342387.In stratified analysis for different populations,significant differences were present in ADIPOQ variant rs822396 for Ashkenazi Jewish,in ADIPOQ variant rs1501299 and ADIPOR variant rs1342387 for Chinese and in ADIPOQ variant rs 2241766 for Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese.In addition,the factors correlated with insulin resistance had synergistic effect with ADIPOQ variants rs2241766 T/G and rs1501299 G/T on risk of CRC.ADIPOQ variants rs2241766 T/G,rs1501299 G/T and ADIPOR variant ADIPOR rs1342387 G/A had a population specific correlation with CRC risk,which may be mediated by insulin resistance.And large well-designed studies are still needed for further evaluation of rs822396 and rs1063538,especially for their interaction and combined effect in the correlation with CRC risk.