Diagnostic value of circulating tumor DNA in molecular characterization of glioma: A meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION: Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has provided a minimally invasive approach for the detection of genetic mutations in glioma. However, the diagnostic value of ctDNA in glioma remains unclear. This meta-analysis was designed to investigate the diagnostic value of ctDNA, compared with the current “criterion standard” tumor tissues. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The included studies were collected by searching PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases. All statistical analyses were performed using the STATA12.0 and Meta-DiSc1.4 software. RESULT: A total of 11 studies comprising 522 glioma patients met our inclusion criteria. The pooled sensitivity and specificity were 0.69 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.66–0.73) and 0.98 (95% CI 0.96–0.99), respectively. The pooled diagnostic odds ratio was 23.27 (95% CI 13.69–39.53) and the area under the curve of the summary receiver operating characteristics curve was 0.90 (95% CI 0.89–0.92). CONCLUSIONS: ctDNA analysis is an effective method to detect the genetic mutation status in glioma patients with high specificity and relatively moderate sensitivity. The application of high-throughput technologies, the detection of patients with high-grade glioma, and sampling from cerebrospinal fluid could have higher diagnostic accuracy. The improvement of detection methods and more large-sample case–control studies are required in the future.