Diagnostic value of secreted frizzled-related protein 2 gene promoter hypermethylation in stool for colorectal cancer: A meta-analysis

Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic value of secreted frizzled-related protein 2 (SFRP2) gene promoter hypermethylation in stool for colorectal cancer (CRC). Materials and Methods: Open published diagnostic study of SFRP2 gene promoter hypermethylation in stool for CRC detection was electronic searched in the databases of PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The data of true positive, false positive false negative, and true negative identified by stool SFRP2 gene hypermethylation was extracted and pooled for diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, and summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve. Results: According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, we finally included nine publications with 792 cases in the meta-analysis. Thus, the diagnostic sensitivity was aggregated through random effect model. The pooled sensitivity was 0.82 with the corresponding 95% confidence interval (95% CI) of 0.79u0.85; the pooled specificity and its corresponding 95% CI were 0.47 and 0.40u0.53 by the random effect model; we pooled the SROC curve by sensitivity versus specificity according to data published in the nine studies. The area under the SROC curve was 0.70 (95% CI: 0.65u0.73). Conclusion: SFRP2 gene promoter hypermethylation in stool can was a potential biomarker for CRC diagnosis with relative high sensitivity.