Circulating non-coding RNAs as non-invasive diagnostic markers of endometriosis: a comprehensive meta-analysis

Background Circulating non-coding RNAs have great potential for diagnosing endometriosis as non-invasive markers. We have assessed the potential accuracy and utility for diagnosis of endometriosis.

We searched many bases to identify the included literature, which included English bases, such as, Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane library and Chinese bases, for instance, CNKI, Wang Fang, VIP, DuXiu, ChaoXing. We also calculated the general sensitivity and specificity, negative likelihood ratio, positive likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratio, ROC curve plotting and so on with Stata 15. I2 could test the heterogeneity of the meta-analysis, the funnel plot valuated whether meta-analysis had a publication bias. Regression analysis could explore heterogeneity in studies.

Comprehensive reading and integrating extracted data, we included 11 published papers. The total number of people included in the case group was 453, and the control group was 362. We, respectively, calculated the general sensitivity and general specificity which were 0.81 (95% CI 0.76–0.85) and 0.77 (95% CI 0.71–0.82) by bivariate analysis. The area under the ROC curve was 0.86 (95% CI 0.83–0.89). There was significant heterogeneity in studies which is I2 = 89.62% (95% CI 87.41%–91.83%). In addition, the results of meta-regression and subgroup analysis showed that the heterogeneity might come from gold standard, evaluation standard, experimental group size, experimental sample and race

The circulating non-coding RNAs have great ability of diagnosing endometriosis as non-invasive markers which were performed robustly and accurately. Similar content being viewed by others

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We sincerely thank Professor Chen Qionghua for his technical support. The study was supported by grant 81871145 of National Natural Science Foundation of China. At the same time, for earlier versions of this manuscript, we are grateful for many helpful comments from each anonymous reviewer. Author information Authors and Affiliations Corresponding author Ethics declarations Conflict of interest The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Ethical approval The authors declare that there are no ethical issues, because this meta-analysis required the study of previous studies without any intervention of the patients. Additional information Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Electronic supplementary material Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material. Rights and permissions About this article Cite this article Li, Y., Chen, Q. Circulating non-coding RNAs as non-invasive diagnostic markers of endometriosis: a comprehensive meta-analysis. Arch Gynecol Obstet 300, 1099–1112 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05290-x Received: Accepted: Published: Version of record: Issue date: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05290-x