Fig 1.
Study flow chart.
Table 1.
Main characteristics of the study sets included in the analysis.
Fig 2.
Risk of bias and applicability concerns summary.
Fig 3.
Risk of bias and applicability concerns graph.
Fig 4.
Forest plot showing the accuracy of the molecular techniques according to the single study sets.
Fig 5.
Accuracy of all PCR techniques (comparison with both fecal and serological tests): ROC curve.
Table 2.
Summary estimates of diagnostic accuracy of PCR techniques for the diagnosis of Strongyloides stercoralis infection.
Fig 6.
Accuracy of real-time PCR (comparison with fecal tests): ROC curve.
Of note, the only study using a CRS (including serology) to assess the accuracy of real-time PCR demonstrated a sensitivity of 56.8%[20], which is almost the same value found with the meta-analysis. On the other hand, the only study using a Bayesian approach [11] demonstrated an extremely low sensitivity (11.6%) of real-time PCR.
Table 3.
Summary of findings table for the review of PCR techniques for the diagnosis of Strongyloides stercoralis infection.