Potential Role of Circulating microRNA-21 for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Diagnosis: A Meta-Analysis.

Abstract

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.

• Authors: Qibin Liao, Peiyu Han, Yue Huang, Zhitong Wu, Qing Chen, Shanshan Li, Jufeng Ye, Xianbo Wu
• Journal: PloS one (PLoS One) Vol. 10 Issue 6 Pg. e0130677 ( 2015) ISSN: 1932-6203 [Electronic] United States
• PMID: 26114756 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Meta-Analysis, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Chemical References

• Biomarkers, Tumor
• MicroRNAs

Topics

• Biomarkers, Tumor (genetics)
• Carcinoma, Hepatocellular (diagnosis, genetics)
• Humans
• Liver Neoplasms (diagnosis, genetics)
• MicroRNAs (genetics)