Meta-analysis of the Diagnostic Value of exosomal microRNA in Renal Cell Carcinoma

Aim: This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of using extracellular vesicle-derived miRNA as a biomarker for the diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma through meta-analysis. Methods Clinical studies on the diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma using extracellular vesicle-derived miRNA were retrieved from various databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Embase ,CNKI, Wanfang Database, VIP Database and SinoMed. After screening and extracting relevant data, the included articles’ quality were assessed with QUADAS-2 tool. Meta-disc 1.4 software was used to analyze the heterogeneity of threshold/non-threshold effects in the included literature, and use Stata MP 16.0 to calculate sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, area under the curve, diagnostic odds ratio and publication bias. Results A total of 11 articles were included. Results showed that the Spearman correlation coefficient was 0.319 ( P  = 0.075 > 0.05), indicating no threshold effect. The pooled sensitivity was 0.73 (95% CI 0.68–0.78), pooled specificity was 0.81 (95% CI 0.76–0.85), pooled positive likelihood ratio was 3.80 (95% CI 3.02–4.77), pooled negative likelihood ratio was 0.33 (95% CI 0.28–0.40), and the diagnostic odds ratio was 11.48 (95% CI 8.27–15.95). The area under the curve was 0.84 (95% CI 0.80–0.87). There was no publication bias detected in this study. Conclusion The expression levels of extracellular vesicle miRNAs hold an important value in the diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma. However, due to the limited number of included studies and heterogeneity among them, further clinical research is necessary.