Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of microRNA-133a in the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI).
Methods: Major databases including PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library were searched for case-controlled studies comparing AMI and non-AMI patients. The outcome was evaluated by the relative expression of microRNA-133a in plasma or serum. The Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio (OR) was calculated using a fixed-effects model meta-analysis for the outcome. The primary outcomes of interest were pooled sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy of microRNA-133a for AMI.
Results: Out of 137 identified related articles, 10 were found to conform with the inclusion and ex-clusion criteria of the study. The 10 case-controlled studies contained complete data for 1,074 patients (with no restrictions of race, age or sex), and a database containing 137 patients from the registry of each study. In addition to low heterogeneity, a statistically significant increase was found in overall microRNA-133a expression between AMI vs. non-AMI; the pooled OR was 22.84 (95% confidence interval [CI] 13.87-37.63), sensitivity was 0.84 (95% CI 0.75-0.90), specificity was 0.82 (95% CI 0.74-0.89) and area under curve (AUC) was 0.90 (95% CI 0.87-0.92).
Conclusions: Based on the meta-analysis of ten case-controlled studies including 1,074 patients,it was found that the level of microRNA-133a in blood serum or plasma maybe used as a diagnostic biomarker of AMI.
Keywords: acute myocardial infarction; diagnostic accuracy/value/performance; meta-analysis; microRNA-133a/miR-133a.