A meta-analysis of the diagnostic value of microRNA-1246 for malignant tumors

Background: Cancer morbidity and mortality are growing rapidly worldwide. There have been an increasing number of studies on the correlation between miRNA1246 expression in circulating blood and tumors; however, no comprehensive conclusion has been reached. Therefore, this meta-analysis was carried out to systematically evaluate the diagnostic value of blood levels of microRNA-1246 for malignant tumors. Methods: We searched PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, The Cochrane Library, the China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI), and Wanfang databases from the inception of each database until November 2018. The quality of the included literature was evaluated using the quality assessment tool called Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2). The data were pooled using Stata14 and Meta-DiSc 1.4 software. Results: Seven studies were included. The pooled sensitivity (SENS) was 0.80 (95% CI 0.65-0.89), the pooled specificity (SPEC) was 0.77 (95% CI 0.70-0.83), the pooled positive likelihood ratio (PLR) was 3.55 (95% CI 2.53-4.99), the pooled negative likelihood ratio (NLR) was 0.26 (95% CI 0.16-0.47), the pooled diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) was 13.78 (95% CI 5.84-32.5), and the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.83 (95% CI 0.79-0.86). The result of Deeks' funnel plot was P = 0.31, indicating a lack of publication bias. Conclusion: MicroRNA-1246 in the blood can be used as a good indicator for the diagnosis of malignant tumor diseases and has a moderate diagnostic accuracy for the differentiation of patients with malignant tumors from healthy people.