Potential role of anti-p53 antibody in diagnosis of lung cancer: evidence from a bivariate meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES The diagnosis of lung cancer remains a clinical challenge. Many studies have assessed the diagnostic potential of anti-p53 antibody in lung cancer patients but with controversial results. This study aims to summarize the overall diagnostic performance of anti-p53 antibody in lung cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS Based on a comprehensive search of the Pubmed and Embase, we identified outcome data from all articles estimating diagnostic accuracy of anti-p53 antibody for lung cancer. A summary estimation for sensitivity, specificity, and other diagnostic indexes were pooled using a bivariate model. The overall measure of accuracy was calculated using summary receiver operating characteristic curve and the area under curve (AUC) was calculated. RESULTS According to our inclusion criteria, 16 studies with 4414 subjects (2249 lung cancers, 2165 controls) were included. The summary estimates were: sensitivity 0.20 (95% CI 0.15-0.27), specificity 0.97 (95% CI 0.95-0.98), positive likelihood ratio 6.64 (95% CI 4.34-10.17), negative likelihood ratio 0.83 (95% CI 0.77-0.89), diagnostic odds ratio 8.04 (95% CI 5.05-12.79), the AUC was 0.84. Subgroup analysis suggested that anti-p53 antibody had a better diagnostic performance for small cell lung cancer than non-small cell lung cancer. CONCLUSIONS anti-p53 antibody can be an assistant marker in diagnosing lung cancer, but the low sensitivity limits its use as a screening tool for lung cancer. Further studies should be performed to confirm our findings.