OBJECTIVE

To investigate O-6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) gene promoter methylation in humoral tissue as biomarker for lung cancer diagnosis by pooling relevant open published data.

METHODS

Clinical studies relevant to MGMT gene promoter methylation and lung cancer were systematic electronic searched in the databases of Medline, EMBASE, Ovid, Web of Science, and CNKI. Data of true positive (tp), false positive (fp), false negative (fn), and true negative (tn) were extracted from the included studies and made combination. The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) of MGMT gene methylation for lung cancer diagnosis were pooled.

RESULTS

Twelve studies were included in the meta-analysis. The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, DOR were 0.39 (95% CI = 0.31-0.49) 0.92 (95% CI = 0.77-0.97), and 4.20 (95% CI = 2.09-8.44), respectively under random effect model. The SROC of MGMT gene methylation for lung cancer diagnosis was 0.58 (95% CI = 0.53-0.62).

CONCLUSION

MGMT methylation rate was higher in plasma and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BLAF) of lung cancer cases compared to controls. High diagnostic specificity indicated that MGMT methylation in plasma and BLAF can be applied as lung cancer confirmation test.