miRNA for the assessment of lymph node metastasis in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma: Systematic review and metanalysis

Background miRNA is one of the advanced epigenetic molecular markers correlating with lymph node metastasis in patients with Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Numerous published papers are showing correlation of miRNA with metastasis. There is a need to analyze and validate such correlation. Method English language literature in major databases from the last 20 years was searched using controlled vocabulary and keywords. Strict inclusion and exclusion criteria were followed for selection of studies. The quality assessment was done as per the QUADAS tool 2 by three independent reviewers. The metanalysis was performed by using random effect model. Standardized mean difference (SMD) was considered as the effect measure. Statistical software used was STATA version 13.1. Results With all inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight studies could qualify for metanalysis. The pooled estimate is found to be 0.13 (−0.35, 0.62), P = .585, which is statistically not significant. This indicates that there is a no significant difference in the fold change between metastasis and no metastasis groups. P‐value of chi‐square statistic for heterogeneity is