Abstract
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major killer of the human population around the world. Identifying effective diagnostic biomarkers for CVDs is particularly important in order to guide optimizing treatment. Accumulating evidence on aberrantly regulated circulating long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) promise to serve as a diagnostic or prognostic biomarker for various types of CVDs. We summarized studies to identify the potential diagnostic values of LncRNAs in CVD patients. We included articles reporting on the association between LncRNAs and diagnosis in CVDs. We calculated sensitivities, specificities, and area under the curves of LncRNAs. The pooled overall sensitivity and specificity for LncRNAs expression profile in differentiating CVD patients from controls (non-CVDs or healthy subjects) were 0.74 (95%CI 0.68–0.80) and 0.81 (95%CI 0.76–0.85), respectively; the overall positive likelihood ratio, 3.9 (95%CI 3.1–4.9); the negative likelihood ratio, 0.32 (95%CI 0.25–0.40); corresponding to an area under curve of 0.85 (95%CI 0.82–0.88) and overall diagnostic odds ratio 12 (95%CI 9–18). Subgroup analysis showed that the detection of LncRNAs expression in plasma substantially improved the diagnostic accuracy. Likewise, meta-regression analysis indicated that the detection method and sample size were the main source of heterogeneity. All these results suggested a relatively good reference value of LncRNAs as auxiliary biomarkers for CVDs, and should be considered in cases where the diagnosis is uncertain. Population-based prospective cohort studies are warranted to confirm our findings.
Highlights
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death and disease burden around the world
All eligible studies in this meta-analysis were required to satisfy the following criteria: (a) studies patients were diagnosed with cardiovascular events; (b) expression of long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) was measured in blood; (c) the study investigated the association between LncRNAs expression and clinical outcomes; (d) cohort studies and case–control studies were included and (e) published in English
17 articles including data on the diagnostic performance of LncRNAs in cardiovascular events were eligible for inclusion [13,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31] (Table 1)
Summary
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death and disease burden around the world. With CVDs being such a huge burden, advancements in disease management have been directed toward the treatment of such diseases, and the development of platforms for early detection and the possible prevention of CVDs. The term circulating long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) defines transcripts lacking coding features longer than 200 nucleotides and has been proposed in recent years as a modulator of cancer pathways and biomarkers of cancer outcomes [2,3,4]. The pervasiveness of the bloodstream and its perfusion through all organs and tissues enables various biomolecules generated and released locally, to be distributed throughout the circulation Altered concentrations of these molecules, like LncRNAs in blood, have been linked to various disease c 2018 The Author(s).
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