Clinical value of serum Epstein-Barr virus DNA assay in the diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Serum Epstein-Barr virus DNA has been approved for diagnosing nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). The goal of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the clinical value of the serum Epstein-Barr virus DNA in the diagnosis of NPC. The PubMed, Embase, Web of Knowledge, Chinese Wanfang Med Online, and National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases were searched to identify suitable studies. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (LR+), negative likelihood ratio (LR-), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) of the serum Epstein-Barr virus DNA for the diagnosis of NPC were calculated. Summary receiver operating characteristic curves were used to summarize overall test performances. Meta-Disc 1.4 and Stata 12.0 softwares were used to analyze the data. A total of 2,520 patients from ten trials were subjected to meta-analysis. The summary estimates of the serum Epstein-Barr virus DNA for NPC diagnosis were as follows: sensitivity 0.69 (95 % confidence interval (CI) 0.65-0.72), specificity 0.84 (95 % CI = 0.82-0.86), LR + 4.81 (95 % CI = 2.94-7.88), LR - 0.25 (95 % CI = 0.13-0.48), DOR 24.65 (95 % CI = 12.64-48.07), and area under the summary receiver operator characteristic (SROC) curve (AUC) was 0.8979. Our study demonstrates that the serum Epstein-Barr virus DNA could be a useful tumor marker for NPC diagnosis.