Shi HB, et al. – The aim of this work was to conduct a systematic review and meta–analysis which indicated that miRNAs, especially multiple miRNAs in the blood, might be novel, feasible biomarkers with relatively high sensitivity and specificity and can be used for the diagnosis of BC. However, further prospective studies with more samples should be conducted for further confirmation.

Methods

• Researchers systematically searched the relevant articles from CBM, PubMed, EMBASE, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI).
• They applied bivariate model to compute the pooled diagnostic parameters and summary receiver operator characteristic (SROC) curve in this meta–analysis, thereby estimating the whole predictive performance.
• They further applied STATA software during the whole analysis.

Results

• Researchers recruited 31 studies from 10 articles, including 1556 cases and 1347 controls.
• This meta–analysis illustrated that the pooled sensitivity, area under the SROC curve, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratio, and negative likelihood ratio were 0.72 (95%CI 0.66–0.76), 0.80 (0.77–0.84), 0.76 (0.71–0.81), 3.0 (2.4–3.8), 8 (5.0–12.0), and 0.37 (0.30–0.46) respectively.
• Furthermore, significant differences were observed between ethnicity, miRNA profiling, and specimen sub–groups.
• These outcomes demonstrated that Asian population–based studies, multiple–miRNA profiling, and blood–based assays might yield a higher diagnostic accuracy than their counterparts.