Circulating chemerin levels in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: The present meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the association between circulating chemerin levels and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in women. METHODS: Relevant studies published up to May 2020 were searched from PubMed, Ovid, the Cochrane Library, and Clinical Trial Database. A random effects model was used to measure the strength of association between PCOS and chemerin by using the standardized mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence interval (CI). All data were analyzed using Stata 12.0 (version 12; Stata-Corp, College Station, TX). RESULTS: The final meta-analysis included eight studies with 15 results including a total of 897 participants (524 patients with PCOS and 373 controls). The circulating chemerin levels were higher in patients with PCOS (random effects SMD = 1.07; 95% CI 0.55-1.59; p < .001) than in controls. However, considerable heterogeneity across studies was not eliminated in subgroup analyses. The meta-regression analysis further suggested that region is the main source of heterogeneity (p = .001). CONCLUSIONS: Our meta-analysis indicated that women with PCOS have significantly higher circulating chemerin levels than in healthy women, indicating that chemerin may be involved in the pathogenesis of PCOS.