Table 1.
Eligibility criteria using PICO (participants, interventions/index test, comparisons, outcomes/target condition) criteria.
Fig 1.
PRISMA 2020 flow diagram summarising the selection process of studies in the systematic review and meta-analysis.
Table 2.
The characteristics of included studies (reports) in the systematic review and meta-analysis.
Fig 2.
The quality assessment results of included studies in the meta-analysis, carried out using RevMan 5.3 software based on the QUADAS-2 evaluation tool.
(A) Risk of bias and applicability concerns summary. Review author judgements about each domain for each study included. (B) Risk of bias and applicability concerns graph. Review author judgements about each domain are presented as percentages across the included studies.
Fig 3.
The role of microRNA-21 in the cancer progression via different signaling pathways.
TNF-α: tumor necrosis factor α; TNFR: tumor necrosis factor receptor; CCL20: chemokine ligand 20; TRAF-2: TNF receptor-associated factor 2; NF-ΚB: nuclear factor κB; JNK: c-Jun N-terminal kinase; PTEN: phosphatase and tensin homolog; PI3K: phosphoinositide 3-kinase; AKT/PKB: Akt/protein kinase B; mTOR: mammalian target of rapamycin; RASA-1: Ras P21 Protein Activator 1; RAS: Ras protein; RAF: Raf proto-oncogene; MEK: mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase; ERK: extracellular signal-regulated kinase; PDCD-4: programmed cell death 4; eIF4A: eukaryotic initiation factor 4A, TPM-1: tropomyocin-1; FASL: Fas ligand; FASR: fas ligand receptor; FADD: Fas-associated via death domain; BTG-2: B-cell translocation gene 2; VHL: von Hippel‑Lindau tumor suppressor; TIMP-3: Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases 3; MMPs: matrix metalloproteinases, GAS5: growth arrest-specific 5.
Fig 4.
A forest plot depicting the area under the curve (AUC) of summary receiver operating characteristics (SROC) of microRNA-21 assay diagnostic value in cervical cancer.
Fig 5.
Forest plots depicting the pooled sensitivity, specificity, PLR, NLR, and DOR of microRNA-21 assay diagnostic value in cervical cancer (LR: Likelihood ratio; OR: odds ratio; CI: confidence interval).
Fig 6.
A funnel plot showing the publication bias.
Fig 7.
A forest plot showing subgroup analysis based on the sample source of microRNA-21 assay diagnostic value in cervical cancer.