A meta-analysis of UCA1 accuracy in the detection of bladder cancer

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Bladder cancer (BCa) exhibits a relatively high prevalence, yet convenient tools for its early detection are lacking. Our study aims to assess the diagnostic value of Urothelial Carcinoma-Associated 1 (UCA1) in the early detection of BCa.

Methods

Systematic searches were performed in electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct, CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP) until 20 July 2023. QUADAS-2 was used for quality assessment, while Meta-DiSc 1.4 and STATA 14.0 were employed for statistical analysis.

Results

A total of 1252 BCa patients and 779 controls, from 12 identified articles, were included. UCA1 showed strong discriminatory ability in BCa detection, with an overall sensitivity of 0.84 specificity of 0.91, and a 0.91 area under the curve (AUC). Strikingly, UCA1 expressed in urine and tissue exhibited higher diagnostic value (0.92 AUC) compared to that in blood (0.86 AUC). Furthermore, urine UCA1 demonstrated remarkable diagnostic performance with 91% sensitivity and 98% specificity. Deeks’ funnel plot detected no substantial publication bias.

Conclusion

UCA1 could serve as a potential biomarker for BCa detection with good diagnostic performance. Besides, compared to UCA1 in blood, urine and tissue UCA1 exhibited higher diagnostic value. Further prospective clinical research is needed to corroborate the conclusion.

PROSPERO Registration

CRD42023463210

KEYWORDS:

• LncRNA
• UCA1
• bladder cancer
• diagnosis
• meta-analysis

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

Silei He and Jiawen Xu developed the initial idea for the study, designed the scope, planned the methodological approach, and defined the search strings. Jufeng Ye and Silei He coordinated the systematic review process, completed the INPLASY registration, executed the search, exported the results, removed duplicate records, screened the abstracts and texts for the systematic review, extracted the data for further analysis and performed the quality assessment. Silei He, Jiawen Xu and Minlin Chen analyzed statistical data. Minlin Chen coordinated the systematic review update. Silei He and Jiawen Xu wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors contributed to critically revising the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to the donors whose names were not included in the author list, but who participated in this program.

Data availability statement

Table 1 provides the original data extracted from included studies, which is publicly available.

Additional information

Funding

This paper received no funding.