Association of osteoarthritis and circulating adiponectin levels: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The objective of this study was to perform a meta-analysis to investigate the specific relationship between the expression level of circulating adiponectin and osteoarthritis (OA).

Multiple databases were searched to estimate the high quality of studies relevant to adiponectin and OA. We extracted the data from the eligible studies and included them in the meta-analysis using a random effects model. Subgroup analysis and meta-regression were further performed to explore the potential sources of heterogeneity.

Ten articles consisting of thirteen case-control studies that contained a combined total of 1255 subjects. Our results revealed that the OA patients displayed higher adiponectin levels than the healthy controls (SMD = 0.327, 95% CI: 0.11-0.55, P = 0.003). The ethnicity-stratified subgroup analysis indicated that the adiponectin was a sensitive biomarker in both Caucasians (P = 0.021) and Asians (P = 0.037). Moreover, the meta-regression analysis suggested that the sample size (P = 0.03) and nationality (p = 0.01) could account for a part of heterogeneity in our study.

Taken together, the current study indicated that the adiponectin expression levels were higher in the OA patients than in the healthy controls and might be associated with OA prevalence.