Diagnostic value of serum P16 gene promoter methylation in gastric cancer: a meta-analysis

A meta-analysis was carried out to explore the clinical diagnostic value of P16 gene promoter methylation in gastric cancer using serum samples. Information was retrieved up to June 21st, 2016 from PubMed, EMBASE, Ovid (Medline), Google Scholar and CNKI. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (+LR) and negative likelihood ratio (-LR) were calculated by Meta-DiSc1.4, 15 articles containing 1291 cases were retrieved from databases. The median methylation rate for gastric cancer group was 30.43% (range: 10%-84.62%), the healthy control group’s methylation range was 0.0% (range: 0.0%-18.18%). The methylation rate in gastric cancer was statistically higher than in the healthy control (P < 0.05). The sensitivity of P16 MSP in diagnosing gastric cancer was 0.487 (95% CI: 0.446-0.528), specificity was 0.989 (95% CI: 0.976-0.996), the +LR was 15.417 (95% CI: 6.30337.709), the -LR was 0.537 (95% CI: 0.423-0.68), and the Area under the SROC Curve (AUC) was 0.9163.