Xiaojie Zhang, Hong Zhou, Tongbo Wang, Chaorui Wu, Dongbing Zha
Background: At present, the diagnosis of gastric cancer lacks sufficient biomarkers. In this review, we will identify and discuss the value of circulating free nucleic acids in the diagnosis of gastric cancer, in order to find a way to sort out the diagnostic markers for gastric cancer.
Methods: A systematic search was performed on PubMed using the following keywords: (gastric cancer) and (blood or plasma or serum) and (biomarker) and (DNA or RNA or cfDNA or cell-free DNA or RNA or CTC). and the supplementary materials were added from Embase The Science Citation Index and The Cochrane. All the studies contain biomarkers based on CTCs, DNAs, RNAs were reviewed and of which include sensitivity, specificity, and/or AUC/ROC values were further discussed.
Results: 458 studies were searched and 87 contained biomarkers. Of these, 32 were prognostic, 12 were DNA, and 43 were RNA. Finally, 28 studies with complete data were included. The sensitivity and specificity ranged at 38.60%-95.50% and 44.30%-100%. The number of patients varied from 11 to 200, and the media is 60. Additionally, 6 studies included independent validation cohort, and the media sensitivity and specificity were 83.95% and 80.35% respectively.
Conclusion: Although the sensitivity and specificity of biomarkers in current research are still insufficient, they also show great potential value. Therefore, biomarkers with higher sensitivity and specificity require further exploration.