Quantitative assessment of the diagnostic role of MUC1 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma has the worst prognosis of any gastrointestinal cancer, with the mortality approaching the incidence. Early detection is crucial for improving patient prognosis. We therefore performed a meta-analysis to assess the diagnostic performance of MUC1 for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). A comprehensive search was performed to retrieve relevant studies on detecting immunohistochemical expression of MUC1 in the diagnosis of PDAC. Data on accuracy of included studies were extracted for further heterogeneity exploring, statistical pooling, and SROC (summary receiver operating characteristics) analyzing using the Meta-DiSc 1.4 and STATA 12.0 software. Seventeen studies were se1ected with 1,363 patients involved. The heterogeneity (except for threshold effect) was found in these studies. The pooled sensitivity and specificity were 0.83 (95 % confidence interval (CI), 0.81-0.86) and 0.63 (95 % CI, 0.59-0.66), respectively. The pooled positive likelihood ratio (PLR) and negative likelihood ratio (NLR) were 3.02 (95 % CI, 1.95-4.70) and 0.21 (95 % CI, 0.13-0.32), respectively. The pooled diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) was 20.44 (95 % CI, 9.53-43.85). The area under of SROC curve was 0.8879 and the Q index was 0.8185. This meta-analysis indicates that MUC1 assay plays an important role in the diagnosis of PDAC.