Diagnostic Accuracy of Fecal Calprotectin for Predicting Relapse in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Meta-Analysis

Jin-Tong Shi; Nuo Chen; Jia Xu; Hemant Goyal; Zhi-Qi Wu; Jie-Xin Zhang; Hua-Guo Xu

doi:10.3390/jcm12031206

Diagnostic Accuracy of Fecal Calprotectin for Predicting Relapse in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Meta-Analysis

J Clin Med. 2023 Feb 2;12(3):1206. doi: 10.3390/jcm12031206.

Authors

Jin-Tong Shi¹, Nuo Chen¹, Jia Xu¹, Hemant Goyal², Zhi-Qi Wu¹, Jie-Xin Zhang¹, Hua-Guo Xu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Laboratory Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China.
² Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

Abstract

Fecal calprotectin (FC) levels correlate with the disease activity of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD); however, the utility of FC in predicting IBD relapse remains to be determined. We aim to evaluate the efficacy of fecal calprotectin in predicting the relapse of inflammatory bowel disease. We searched Pubmed (MEDLINE), Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane library databases up to 7 July 2021. Our study estimated the pooled sensitivity and specificity, summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve, and the optimal cut-off value for predicting IBD relapse using a multiple threshold model. A total of 24 prospective studies were included in the meta-analysis. The optimal FC cut-off value was 152 μg/g. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of FC was 0.720 (0.528 to 0.856) and 0.740 (0.618 to 0.834), respectively. FC is a useful, non-invasive, and inexpensive biomarker for the early prediction of IBD relapse. An FC value of 152 μg/g is an ideal threshold to identify patients with a high relapse probability.

Keywords: Fecal calprotectin; biomarker; diagnosis; inflammatory bowel diseases.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (BK20181492), the National Key Clinical Department of Laboratory Medicine of China in Nanjing, the Key Laboratory for Laboratory Medicine of Jiangsu Province (ZDXKB2016005), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.