MiRNAs as biomarkers for diagnosis of neonatal sepsis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The relationship between circulating miRNAs and neonatal sepsis and the mechanism of action are still unclear at this time. Therefore, the potential diagnostic role of miRNAs in neonatal sepsis (NS) was studied through meta-analysis.

Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and Embase are retrieved, supplemented by manual search, and the search was conducted to find related studies without time limit until May 2022.The quality of the literature was assessed via QUADAS criteria and meta-analyzed via Stata 11.0 software, including the assessment of specificity, sensitivity, likelihood ratio and diagnostic odds ratio. Then, sensitivity analysis and heterogeneity testing were conducted, and finally, the summary receiver operating characteristics (SROC) curve was drawn.

This study included 14 articles, including 20 miRNAs and 1597 newborns(control group: 727 and case group: 870). Among them, one article was of low quality, three articles were of high quality, and the rest were of medium quality. According to the results of random effects model analysis, the pooled specificity and sensitivity of miRNA for the diagnosis of NS were 0.83 (95%CI: 0.79–0.87) and 0.76 (95%CI: 0.72–0.80), respectively. And negative likelihood ratio, positive likelihood ratio, and diagnostic odds ratio were 0.29 (95%CI: 0.24–0.34), 4.51 (95%CI: 3.52–5.78), and 15.81 (95%CI: 10.71–23.35), respectively. The area under the SROC curve was 0.86, and there was no evidence publication bias detected in the funnel plot.

Circulating miRNAs may be very useful in the development of early diagnostic strategies for neonatal sepsis.