Analysis of Diagnostic Value of YKL-40 in Ovarian Cancer.
OBJECTIVE
Early diagnosis of ovarian cancer is crucial in clinical practice but is difficult. Accumulating studies have investigated the utility of YKL-40 in early detection of ovarian cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the overall accuracy of YKL-40 in diagnosis of ovarian cancer through a meta-analysis of published studies.


METHODS
A comprehensive search of related literature was performed in PubMed, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases. Meta-DiSc 1.4 and STATA 11.0 were selected for data analysis, and Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool version 2 was used to assess the quality of included studies. Data from selected studies were pooled to yield summary sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios, diagnostic odds ratio, and summary receiver operating characteristic curve.


RESULTS
A total of 13 studies dating up to May 2015 with 1623 individuals were enrolled in the present study. The pooled characteristics of these studies were as follows: sensitivity 0.71 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.68-0.75), specificity 0.90 (95% CI, 0.88-0.92), positive likelihood ratio 7.24 (95% CI, 4.22-12.43), negative likelihood ratio 0.34 (95% CI, 0.27-0.42), and diagnostic odds ratio 24.93 (95% CI, 12.61-49.27), respectively. The area under the curve was 0.8471.


CONCLUSIONS
The results indicated that YKL-40 could be regarded as an effective biomarker for diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
*Department of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University; †Central Laboratory, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University; and ‡Medical College, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
Jie
J
Chen
Xian
X
Liu
Yu-Qin
YQ
Pan
Bang-Shun
BS
He
Hou-Qun
HQ
Ying
Hui-Ling
HL
Sun
Qi-Wen
QW
Deng
Kang
K
Lin
Hong-Xin
HX
Peng
Shu-Kui
SK
Wang