Open AccessPotential Role of Circulating microRNA-21 for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Diagnosis: A Meta-Analysis
Author(s) -
Qiuyan Liao,
Ping Han,
Yue Huang,
Zhitong Wu,
Qing Chen,
Shanshan Li,
Jufeng Ye,
Xianbo Wu
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0130677
Subject(s) - hepatocellular carcinoma , microrna , meta analysis , medicine , carcinoma , oncology , cancer research , bioinformatics , computational biology , biology , genetics , gene
Background Circulating microRNA-21 (miR-21) is known to be aberrantly expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients, and this implies that microRNA-21 is a promising and novel indicator of HCC. However, a systematic evaluation of the performance of microRNA-21 as a diagnostic marker for HCC has yet to be conducted. Therefore, the test performance of circulating miR-21 for HCC was assessed in this study. Methods Three common international databases and a Chinese electronic database were used to search for literature on the diagnostic accuracy of microRNA-21 for HCC. The pooled results included the sensitivity and specificity of microRNA-21 for HCC detection and were analyzed with a random effect model. The area under summary receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used to estimate overall test performance. Results A total of 339 HCC patients and 338 controls without HCC from four published studies were eligible for the meta-analysis and included in our study. The test performance of circulating miR-21 in HCC detection was assessed with the summary estimates of sensitivity and specificity, which were 81.2% (95% CI: 70.8% to 88.4%) and 84.8% (95% CI: 75.1% to 91.2%), respectively. The value of AUC was 0.90 (95% CI: 0.87 to 0.92). Significant inter-study heterogeneity was detected by our analysis, and sub-group analyses suggested that the type of control group was probably a source of heterogeneity. Conclusions Our current findings suggested that circulating miR-21 can serve as a potential co-biomarker for early-stage HCC diagnosis. Thorough large-scale studies are needed to confirm the generalizability of our findings.