Diagnosis of Neisseria Gonorrhoeae by Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neisseria gonorrhoeae (gonococci) is the pathogen of gonorrhea. At present, there is no robust statistical analysis targeting the detection accuracy for N.gonorrhoeae of loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). We performed a full search of five databases for studies using the LAMP method to detect N.gonorrhoeae in this study. Nine datasets derived from eight studies satisfying the inclusion requirement were collected for this study. The pooled sensitivity rate and specificity were calculated as 98.53 and 99.49%. The pooled positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR) and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were 66.0, 0.04 and 1863.8. After plotting the summary receiver operating characteristic (sROC), the area under the curve (AUC) and Q* index was calculated as 0.99 and 0.9774. Subgroup analyses based on the type of samples, location, and gold standard did not find sources of significant heterogeneity. In conclusion, the LAMP method could be an effective and convenient method with high accuracy for the clinical detection of N.gonorrhoeae. Moreover, the confirmation of this finding needs more high-quality studies with regional data and large samples.