Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic value of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC).
Methods: Articles related to diagnosis of UC by ANCA test, published before November 2007, were retrieved in the databanks such as Chinese BioMedical Disc, Chinese Medical Current Contents, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and VIP databank. Related journals were searched manually. Meta-analysis was performed by summary receiver operating characteristic curve recommended by Diagnostic and Screening Group of the Cochrane Collaboration Web with the parameters such as sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, predictive values and likelihood ratio.
Results: Totally 10 studies including 381 patients met the inclusion criteria. Meta-analysis showed that the sensitivity and specificity of ANCA to the diagnosis of UC were 52.2% and 99.0% respectively. The positive and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV) were 98.0% and 68.7% respectively. Meanwhile, the positive and negative likelihood ratio (+LR and -LR) were 52.2 and 0.5, respectively.
Conclusions: ANCA is an immunological index related to UC. Positive ANCA helps diagnose UC, but is not sensible enough to screen UC.