Diagnostic significance of miRNAs as potential biomarkers for human renal cell carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Background

Numerous studies have explored miRNAs as potential diagnostic biomarkers in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, its diagnostic accuracy remains controversial.

Research design and methods

PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, China Science and Technology Journal, and Wanfang Databases were searched according to inclusion/exclusion criteria. The quality of the studies was assessed using the QUADAS-2 scale. The combined sensitivity, specificity, positive/negative likelihood ratios, diagnostic odds ratio, and area under the curve (AUC) of the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) were calculated using a bivariate mixed-effect model.

Results

Of the 16 studies included, 20 diagnostic tests were assessed. Results are presented with a corresponding 95% confidence interval in brackets: for miR-210, the combined sensitivity was 0.78 (0.68–0.85), specificity 0.71 (0.61–0.79), and AUC 0.81 (0.77–0.8); for miR-378, combined sensitivity 0.78 (0.68–0.86), specificity 0.79 (0.64–0.89), and AUC 0.85 (0.81–0.88); for miR-1233, combined sensitivity 0.86 (0.80–0.90), specificity 0.80 (0.36–0.96), and AUC 0.86 (0.83–0.89); for miR-21, combined sensitivity 0.84 (0.78–0.89), specificity 0.79 (0.55–0.92), and AUC 0.87 (0.84–0.89).

Conclusions

This meta-analysis suggests that miR-210, miR-378, miR-1233, and miR-21 have high accuracy in diagnosing RCC.

KEYWORDS:

• miRNA
• biomarker
• renal cell carcinoma
• diagnosis
• meta-analysis

Ethical approval

All analyses in the current study are aligned with established medical ethics guidelines.

Informed consent

The current study is a retrospective meta-analysis based on previously published articles. Thus, informed consent was not needed.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Bullet Edits Limited for the linguistic editing and proofreading of the manuscript.

Financial and competing interests disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed in this study are included in this published article.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81871147 & 82071639) and the Chengdu Science and Technology Program (2019-YFYF-00087-SN).