Diagnostic value of IMP3 in pancreatic cancer: a meta-analysis

An increasing number of studies have examined the ability of IMP3 (insulin-like growth factor 2 messenger RNA binding protein 3) to be a marker for the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer (PCa). The exact role of IMP3 needs to be elucidated. The aim of this study is to determine the overall accuracy of IMP3 in PCa through a meta-analysis of published studies.

Publications addressing the accuracy of IMP3 in the diagnosis of PCa were selected from Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and The Chinese Journals Full-text Database (CNKI). The following indexes of test accuracy were computed for each study: sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR). The diagnostic threshold identified for each study was used to plot a summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve. Statistical analysis was performed by Meta-Disc 1.4 and STATA 12.0 software.

10 studies met the inclusion criteria. The summary estimates for IMP3 in the diagnosis of PCa were: sensitivity 0.82 (95% CI, 0.78-0.85), specificity 0.87 (95% CI, 0.83-0.90), positive likelihood ratio (PLR) 15.04 (95% CI, 1.83-123.26), negative likelihood ratio (NLR) 0.21 (95% CI, 0.10-0.46) and diagnostic odds ratio 70.10 (95% CI, 16.74-293.56). The SROC curve indicated that the maximum joint sensitivity and specificity (Q-value) was 0.87; the area under the curve was 0.94.

Our findings suggest that IMP3 may be a useful diagnostic adjunctive tool for confirming PCa. However, further large scale studies are needed to confirm these findings.