Circulating miR-128 as a potential diagnostic biomarker for glioma

•Glioma is the most common and deadly primary brain tumor.•MiR-128 is significantly down-regulated in the circulation of glioma patients.•MiR-128 in circulating is a promising marker for early diagnosis of glioma. miR-128 in circulation is a promising marker for early diagnosis of glioma. A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and clinical value of circulating miR-128 in patients with glioma. A comprehensive literature search for relevant published articles (last search updated on December 29, 2016) was conducted in the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, PubMed, and Embase. The quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS) tool was used to score the quality of the eligible studies. Meta-Disc 1.4 software was used to test for heterogeneity and to perform the meta-analysis. The three studies included in our study enrolled a total of 191 patients with glioma and 73 individuals without tumor. Using a fixed-effect model analysis, the summary assessments revealed that the pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, and negative likelihood ratio were 0.89 (95% CI: 0.84–0.93), 0.90 (95% CI: 0.81–0.96), 8.07 (95% CI: 4.21–15.46), and 0.13 (95% CI: 0.09–0.19), respectively. The diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) of miR-128 was 65.00 (95% CI: 26.90–157.10), indicating that the overall accuracy of the miR-128 test for detecting glioma was high. The value of I2 was 0.0%, indicating that there was no significant heterogeneity among studies. The present meta-analysis showed that circulating miR-128 might be a promising noninvasive biomarker for diagnosing glioma.