The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Systems Endocrinology
Volume 16 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1434174
Diagnostic Accuracy of Methylated SEPT9 for Primary Liver Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Provisionally accepted- Zhoushan Hospital, Zhoushan, China
Background: Primary live cancer (PLC), including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC). This meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of blood methylated septin 9 gene (mSEPT9) for PLC and to analyze its performance across various subgroups. Methods: We conducted a comprehensive search across PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), covering research up to May 10, 2024. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic odds ratios, and area under the summary receiver operating characteristic (AUC) were calculated for the diagnostic performance of mSEPT9 for PLC. The quality of the studies was assessed using the QUADAS-2 tool, and the meta-analysis was performed using Stata16.0 software. Results: Ten articles with 2,182 participants were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity of mSEPT9 for detecting primary liver cancer was 0.51 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.37-0.65), and the pooled specificity was 0.93 (95% CI: 0.78-0.98). The pooled diagnostic odds ratio was 13 (95% CI: -58), and the area under the Summary Receiver Operator Characteristic Curve was 0.75 (95% CI: 0.71-0.79). Subgroup analyses showed that ICC, case-control studies, qPCR and Asian populations had higher specificities (0.99 [95% CI: 0.97–1.00], 0.93 [95% CI: 0.91-0.95], 0.90 [95% CI: 0.88-0.92] and 0.94 [95% CI: 0.92-0.96], respectively) and diagnostic odds ratios (62.04 [95% CI: 6.53-589.53], 17.62 [95% CI: 4.03-76.99], 13.03 [95% CI: 2.01-84.63] and 14.19 [95% CI: 2.42-83.11], respectively) compared to hepatocellular carcinoma, cohort Study, and Euramerican populations. Conclusions: This study confirmed that mSEPT9 in blood has high specificity and moderate sensitivity for detecting primary liver cancer. The diagnostic performance of mSEPT9 varied across different subgroups, limiting its use as an independent screening tool and necessitating its use in conjunction with other methods for confirmatory diagnostics.
Keywords: Diagnostic performance, Methylation, SEPT9, primary liver cancer, Meta-analysis
Received: 31 May 2024; Accepted: 23 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jin, Qian, Chen, Yu and Dong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jinliang Dong, Zhoushan Hospital, Zhoushan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.