Meta-Analysis of Antinuclear Antibodies in the Diagnosis of Antimitochondrial Antibody-Negative Primary Biliary Cholangitis

Figure 1

Flowchart of studies included in the meta-analysis. 5842 articles without duplicates were enrolled during database searching. Finally, 11 studies were included in quantitative synthesis and meta-analysis with the following inclusion criteria: (i) assessed the diagnostic accuracy of the ANA test on AMA-negative PBC patients and controls; (ii) full-text articles; (iii) showed sufficient information of true positive (TP), false positive (FP), false negative (FN), and true negative (TN) numbers to calculate sensitivity and specificity; and (iv) the publication language should be in either English or Chinese. The exclusion criteria were as follows: (i) review articles, case reports, and letters; (ii) lack of sufficient data; and (iii) articles without an abstract. Abbreviations: AMA: antimitochondrial antibody; PBC: primary biliary cholangitis.