Correlation Between Circulating Adropin Levels and Patients with PCOS: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

An increasing number of young women suffer from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Reasonable diagnosis and monitoring are important steps in the treatment of PCOS. Therefore, we performed an updated meta-analysis between adropin levels and PCOS to identify their relationship. We searched 8 databases (Pubmed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang, CBM, clinicaltrials.gov, OpenGrey) for relevant studies using the following search items: 'PCOS or polycystic ovary syndrome or Stein-Leventhal syndrome' AND 'adropin'. Standardized mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals(CIs) were used as the outcomes. Data were analyzed using Revman 5.3, Stata 16, and MetaXL. Nineteen articles were include in this meta-analysis. The PCOS group had significantly lower adropin levels than the healthy groups (SMD = -2.79 ng/ml, 95%CI (-3.42, -2.16), p < 0.00001). Significant publication bias (p < 0.05) was observed; additionally, the results were robust based on metatrim and fail-safe number (Nfs). Meta-regression analysis showed that age, glucose ratio and luteinizing hormone (LH) may be sources of heterogeneity (univariate meta-regression analysis: P = 0.058 vs P = 0.026 vs P = 0.091). Furthermore, BMI, insulin, glucose, HOMA-IR, total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) may be closely related to adropin levels (p < 0.05) owing to meta-analysis of correlation coefficient. We found there was a correlation between adropin levels and PCOS: circulating adropin levels were significantly lower in patients with PCOS than healthy controls, which may be helpful for clinical diagnosis and detection of PCOS.