Association of Pentraxin 3 with Autoimmune Diseases: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) plays an important role in the inflammatory processes. Recently it has been reported to be involved in autoimmune diseases. Many studies have investigated the serum/plasma levels of PTX3 in autoimmune diseases, but the results are contradictory or inconclusive among those findings. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to investigate whether serum/plasma levels of PTX3 were associated with autoimmune diseases by comparing the serum/plasma levels of PTX3 in the autoimmune diseases and healthy controls.

PubMed, ELSEVIER ScienceDirect and Cochrane Library databases (up to December 26, 2015) were used to obtain all relative published literatures. The study quality was assessed by the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. Pooled standard mean difference (SMD) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated by random-effect model analysis.

A total of 20 studies including seven studies of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), four studies of ankylosing spondylitis (AS), five studies of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), three studies of systemic sclerosis (SSc) and one study of multiple sclerosis (MS) were finally included in the meta-analysis. The results revealed that the serum/plasma levels of PTX3 in autoimmune diseases were significantly higher than in normal controls (SMD = 0.496 ng/mL, 95% CI = 0.107-0.886, p <0.001; I(2) = 91.9, p <0.001). The subgroup analysis showed that the serum/plasma levels of PTX3 in AS and SSc were higher than in healthy controls (pooled SMD = 0.926 ng/mL, 95% CI = 0.174-1.677, p <0.001, I(2) = 77.0, p = 0.013; pooled SMD = 0.546 ng/mL, 95% CI = 0.136-0.957, p <0.001; I(2) = 30.9, p = 0.299, respectively).

Serum/plasma levels of PTX3 in autoimmune diseases were higher than in normal controls.