Diagnostic value of RASSF1A hypermethylation in colorectal cancer: a meta-analysis

Abstract

PurposeRas association domain family 1 isoform A (RASSF1A), a member of Ras association domain family, plays an important role in tumorigenesis. The goal of our meta-analysis was to assess the diagnostic value of RASSF1A hypermethylation in colorectal cancer (CRC). MethodsPubMed, Embase, CNKI and Wanfang databases were used to conduct literature selection. The association between RASSF1A methylation and CRC risk was evaluated by odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Summary receiver operating characteristics (SROC) test was used to estimate the diagnostic value of RASSF1A methylation for CRC. ResultsA total of 22 articles among 1736 CRC and 811 non-tumor samples were included in the current meta-analysis. Our results showed that RASSF1A hypermethylation was found more frequently in CRC than non-tumor samples (OR = 6.02, 95% CI = 4.57–7.93, P < 0.001). Our SROC test showed that RASSF1A hypermethylation had an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.71 with a pooled sensitivity of 0.33 (95% CI = 0.31–0.36), a pooled specificity of 0.86 (95% CI = 0.84–0.89), a positive-likelihood ratio of 3.18 (95% CI = 1.99–5.09), a negative-likelihood ratio of 0.71 (95% CI = 0.63–0.80), and a diagnostic odds ratio of 5.53 (95% CI = 3.40–9.00). Data mining study indicated that a trend of increased RASSF1A expression was found in the CRC cell line C2C12 after 5-AZA treatment. ConclusionsOur study established that RASSF1A hypermethylation might have a potential value in the clinical diagnosis of CRC.