Long noncoding RNAs as novel serum biomarkers for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are outstanding as novel cancer biomarkers with great prospects. Herein, we focused on summarizing the overall diagnostic evaluation of lncRNAs for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Relevant literature was collected from the online databases. The Quality Assessment for Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy checklist was used to assess the quality of included studies. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were plotted using random-effects models. Summary receiver operating characteristic curve and the area under the curve (AUC) were used to estimate the overall test performance. Statistical analysis was performed by STATA 14.0 and Meta-DiSc 1.4 software. Ten studies with a total of 820 HCC patients and 785 healthy controls were included. For overall lncRNAs, the pooled sensitivity, specificity, and DOR to predict HCC patients were 80% [95% confidence interval (CI) 77-82%], 79% (95% CI 76-81%), and 27.66 (95% CI 14.26-53.63), respectively, corresponding to an AUC of 0.91. LncRNAs were a high diagnostic value for HCC and its expression could potentially be used as auxiliary biomarker in confirming HCC.