Background: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Recently, several studies have revealed the diagnostic value of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) for AMI detection. However, the diagnostic capacity of miRNAs for AMI is still controversial due to the inconsistent results among studies.
Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted to retrieve relevant articles in PubMed and other databases up to February 2017. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), and area under the curve (AUC) were used to assess the overall test performance of miRNAs. Subgroup analysis was conducted to explore the potential sources of heterogeneity. We evaluated the publication bias by the Deeks' funnel plot asymmetry test and all statistical analyses were performed using Meta-disc 1.4 and Stata software.
Results: A total of 26 articles comprising 1973 AMI patients and 1236 healthy controls were included in this meta-analysis. The overall pooled diagnostic data was as follows: the pooled sensitivity of 0.76 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.75-0.78), the pooled specificity of 0.82 (95% CI: 0.81-0.84), the pooled PLR of 4.68 (95% CI: 3.92-5.59), the pooled NLR of 0.28 (95% CI: 0.25-0.32), and the pooled DOR of 18.66 (95% CI: 14.11-24.68). The AUC value was 0.8661 in the overall summary receiver operator characteristic curve. Subgroup analysis indicated that miRNA-499 had better diagnostic accuracy over other miRNAs.
Conclusion: MiRNAs may serve as promising diagnostic biomarkers in the early diagnosis of AMI. Further studies were needed to evaluate the diagnostic value of miRNAs for AMI before clinical application.