Pentraxin 3 as a promising biomarker for cancer detection: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background Mounting studies reported that circulating pentraxin 3 (PTX3) expression level was significantly different between cancer patients and healthy groups, suggesting that PTX3 may be a potential biomarker for cancer detection. However, the results were inconsistent. In this paper, a systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to quantitatively assess the diagnostic value of PTX3 in cancer detection.Methods A comprehensive computerized literature search was conducted in Embase, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) from inception to July 31, 2019. Eligible studies were identified and raw data were extracted. Diagnostic estimates were synthesized using STATA (version 12.0) and MetaDisc (version 1.4) statistical software.Results Overall, 9 studies from 8 citations with a total of 1408 cancer patiens and 3116 controls were included in this meta-analysis. The global sensitivity was 0.70 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.67 – 0.72), and the specificity was 0.77 (95% CI: 0.75 – 0.78). The pooled positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and the diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were 2.86 (95% CI: 2.29 – 3.56), 0.40 (95% CI: 0.32 – 0.50) and 7.38 (95% CI: 5.05 – 10.78), respectively. The merged AUC was 0.80 (95% CI: 0.76 – 0.83).Conclusion The serum PTX3 appears to be a reliable biomarker for cancer detection though large-scale multicenter studies are needed.