The Potential Diagnostic Accuracy of Circulating MicroRNAs for Leukemia: A Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Leukemia is a common malignant disease in the human blood system. Many researchers have proposed circulating microRNAs as biomarkers for the diagnosis of leukemia. We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of circulating miRNAs in the diagnosis of leukemia. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search (updated to October 13, 2020) in PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Wanfang database and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) was performed to identify eligible studies. The sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), and area under the curve (AUC) for diagnosing leukemia were pooled for both overall and subgroup analysis. The meta-regression and subgroup analysis were performed to explore heterogeneity and Deeks’ funnel plot was used to assess publication bias. RESULTS: 49 studies from 22 publications with a total of 3,489 leukemia patients and 2,756 healthy controls were included in this meta-analysis. The overall sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratio and area under the curve were 0.83, 0.92, 10.8, 0.18, 59 and 0.94, respectively. Subgroup analysis shows that the microRNA clusters of plasma type could carry out a better diagnostic accuracy of leukemia patients. In addition, publication bias was not found. CONCLUSIONS: Circulating microRNAs can be used as a promising noninvasive biomarker in the early diagnosis of leukemia.