Circulating chemerin levels in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Objective

The present meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the association between circulating chemerin levels and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in women.

Methods

Relevant studies published up to May 2020 were searched from PubMed, Ovid, the Cochrane Library, and Clinical Trial Database. A random effects model was used to measure the strength of association between PCOS and chemerin by using the standardized mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence interval (CI). All data were analyzed using Stata 12.0 (version 12; Stata-Corp, College Station, TX).

Results

The final meta-analysis included eight studies with 15 results including a total of 897 participants (524 patients with PCOS and 373 controls). The circulating chemerin levels were higher in patients with PCOS (random effects SMD = 1.07; 95% CI: 0.55–1.59; p < .001) than in controls. However, considerable heterogeneity across studies was not eliminated in subgroup analyses. The meta-regression analysis further suggested that region is the main source of heterogeneity (p = .001).

Conclusions

Our meta-analysis indicated that women with PCOS have significantly higher circulating chemerin levels than in healthy women, indicating that chemerin may be involved in the pathogenesis of PCOS.

多囊卵巢综合征女性循环趋化素水平：一项荟萃分析 摘要

目的：本荟萃分析旨在探讨循环趋化素水平与女性多囊卵巢综合征（PCOS）之间的关系。

方法：从PubMed、Ovid、Cochran图书馆和临床试验数据库中检索截至2020年5月发表的相关研究。采用随机效应模型, 通过标准化平均差（SMD）和95%置信区间（CI）测量PCOS和趋化素之间的关联强度。所有数据均采用Stata 12.0进行分析。（版本12；德克萨斯州卡城Stata公司）。

结果：最终荟萃分析纳入8项研究, 其中有15项结果, 包含897名受试者（524名多囊卵巢综合征患者和373名对照）。多囊卵巢综合征患者的趋化素水平高于对照组（随机效应SMD = 1.07；95%CI:0.55-1.59；p < 0.001）。然而, 在亚组分析中并没有消除研究间的显著异质性。多元元回归分析进一步表明, 地域是异质性的主要来源（p=.001）。

结论：此荟萃分析表明, 多囊卵巢综合征患者的循环趋化素水平明显高于健康女性, 表明趋化素可能参与多囊卵巢综合征的发病机制。

Keywords:

• Chemerin
• polycystic ovary syndrome
• meta-analysis
• adipokine
• inflammation
• homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance

Acknowledgements

We thank all the authors who contributed to this study. We also thank TopEdit (www.topeditsci.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Subject Innovation Team Project of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Shanxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine [Grant No. 2020XKTD-C01].