Diagnostic value of exosomes in patients with liver cancer: a systematic review

Background Liver cancer is a disease with high morbidity and mortality. More and more studies have shown that exosomes can be used as biomarkers for the diagnosis of liver cancer, but their diagnostic accuracy is still unclear. Therefore, this meta-analysis summarizes various studies on the diagnostic value of exosomes for liver cancer. Methods A comprehensive search was carried out based on the set search terms in PubMed, Web of Science and Wiley until April 1, 2022. All statistical analyses were performed by STATA 17 statistical software and Review Manager 5.4. Quality Assessment for Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy 2 tool was applied to evaluate the quality of included articles. Random effects model was used to calculate various diagnostic indicators. Results A total of 47 studies were included in this meta-analysis. The number of participants was 3196. The combined sensitivity, specificity and the area under the curve with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were, respectively 0.80 (0.75-0.84), 0.83 (0.79-0.87), 0.89 (0.85-0.91). Conclusions This meta-analysis shows that exosomes have good diagnostic accuracy for liver cancer and can be used as an effective biomarker for the diagnosis of liver cancer.