IP-10 for the diagnosis of tuberculosis in children: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) is a highly contagious and chronic disease. The microbiological examination to confirm children TB disease are limited due to paucibacillary Mycobacterium, specimens and detecting facilities. Considering these limitations in diagnosing children TB, new and reliable methods that detect children TB should be developed. Recently, Interferon gamma-induced protein 10 (IP-10) has been identified as a sensitive parameter in detecting children TB. The present study aims to synthesis and analysis the diagnostic value of IP-10 for children TB. METHODS: We will search PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Chinese Biological Medical Databases. We will search relevant citations up to May 2019. The quality of individual study will be assessed using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool-2 (QUADAS-2). Stata 14.0 software will be used to calculate the pooled sensitivity, pooled specificity, pooled positive likelihood ratio (PLR), pooled negative likelihood ratio (NLR), pooled diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), pre-test probability, post-test probability and the hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic (HSROC) curve. RESULTS: The results of this study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. DISCUSSION: The evidence will indicate that IP-10 test is an alternative immunological test in detecting children TB. This is a protocol of systematic review and meta-analysis, so the ethical approval and patient consent are not required. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42019129743.