Potential Role of microRNA-21 in the Diagnosis of Gastric Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

INTRODUCTION: Accumulating evidences indicate that microRNA-21(miR-21) show significant high concentration in plasma of gastric cancer (GC) patients compared to normal individuals, suggesting that it may be a useful novel diagnostic biomarker for gastric cancer. Therefore, we aimed to assess the potential diagnostic value of miR-21 for gastric cancer in this study. METHODS: Literature database including PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Ovid, SciVerse, Science Direct, Scopus, BioMed Central, Biosis previews,Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Technology of Chongqing (VIP), and Wan Fang DATA were searched for publications concerning the diagnostic value of miR-21 for GC without language restriction. The quality of each study was scored with the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS). Then, data were retrieved from any qualified article hits and subject to meta-analysis. Receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) were used to check the overall test performance. Evidence of heterogeneity was evaluated using the Chi-square and I (2) test. RESULTS: Five studies with a total 251 GC patients and 184 control individuals were included in this meta-analysis. All of the included studies are of high quality (QUADAS score$13). The summary estimates revealed that the pooled sensitivity is 66.5% (95% confidence interval (CI): 55.0%–76.3%) and the specificity is 83.1% (95% CI: 69.4%–91.5%). In addition, the area under the summary ROC curve (AUC) is 0.80. CONCLUSION: The current evidence suggests that miR-21 has potential diagnostic value with a moderate sensitivity and specificity for GC. More prospective studies on the diagnostic value of miR-21 for GC are needed in the future.