[Diagnostic Efficacy of SHOX2 Gene Hypermethylation for Lung Cancer: A Meta-Analysis]

Lung cancer is the most common malignant tumor in clinic. The prognosis of advanced patients is poor, and the 5-year survival rate is low. Therefore, early diagnosis becomes the key to improve the prognosis of patients. In recent years, with the development of molecular biology technology, aberrant modification of some driver genes, such as methylation, has become an important method for early diagnosis of lung cancer. The purpose of the present work was to quantitatively evaluate the diagnostic value of abnormal hypermethylation in short state homeobox 2 (SHOX2) promoter region in lung cancer by evidence-based medicine.

We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Ovid, Web of Science and CNKI for literatures related to the relationship between SHOX2 gene promoter hypermethylation and lung cancer. The data of SHOX2 promoter hymethylation in the original study were extracted. The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity and area under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of SHOX2 promoter methylation were calculated.

Finally, 13 publications were included in this meta-analysis, and due to significant statistical heterogeneity among the studies (P<0.05) the data was pooled by random effect model. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of SHOX2 promoter hypermethylation in the diagnosis of lung cancer were 0.75 (95%CI: 0.74-0.77) and 0.89 (95%CI: 0.88-0.91), respectively; The positive likelihood ratio value was 6.75 (4.56-9.99), and the negative predictive value was 0.36 (0.25-0.52); The diagnostic odds ratio was 23.16 (11.34-47.31), and the area under the ROC curve was 0.9.

SHOX2 gene promoter hypermethylation is high in serum, broncholavage fluid and pleural effusion of lung cancer patients, which can be used as a biomarker for auxiliary diagnosis of lung cancer.