Diagnostic accuracy of CD44V6 for osteosarcoma: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Recently, more and more evidences have revealed the association between CD44V6 and osteosarcoma (OS), but whether it can be used as a clinical biomarker is still unknown. The purpose of this study is to assess the diagnostic value of CD44V6 in OS by conducting a meta-analysis. METHODS: All relevant electronic literatures were collected from seven international databases together with three Chinese databases up to April 23, 2016. Eligible studies were selected through multiple search strategies and the quality was assessed by QUADAS. Data was extracted from studies according to the key statistics index. All analyses were performed using STATA 12 and Meta-DiSc 1.4 statistical software. RESULTS: According to the exclusion and inclusion criteria, 8 literatures were retrieved, accounting for 463 cases and 188 controls. For discriminating OS from benign bone tumor or healthy controls, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was 0.91 (95 % CI 0.88-0.93). Overall, the results showed pooled sensitivity of 0.743 (95 % CI 0.606-0.844) and specificity of 0.897 (95 % CI 0.818-0.945), respectively. Substantial heterogeneity was detected in this study (I 2 = 90 %). The publication bias was assessed by using Deeks' asymmetry test (p = 0.795). No evidence of heterogeneity from threshold effects was detected by the Spearman correlation coefficient (-0.506, p = 0.201). Meta-regression was performed to mining the source of heterogeneity, and subgroup analysis showed that neither the cut-off values nor the control groups were the source of heterogeneity. CONCLUSIONS: The present results suggest that promoted CD44V6 expression levels are associated with OS and CD44V6 may be used as a diagnostic marker for OS.