Osteopontin (OPN) has been reported as one of the most promising markers for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The goal of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the clinical value of the plasma OPN versus alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in the diagnosis of HCC.

A comprehensive literature search of PubMed, Foreign Medical Journal Service, Chinese Science Journals Database, and Google Scholar was conducted on articles published before 1st October 2013. The sensitivity, specificity, and other measures of accuracy of OPN in the diagnosis of HCC were pooled using random effects models. The methodological quality of each study was assessed by QUADAS (quality assessment for studies of diagnostic accuracy). Statistical analysis was performed by employing Meta-Disc 1.4 and Stata, version 12. Summary receiver operating characteristic curves were used to summarize overall test performance.

Seven studies were included in our meta-analysis. The summary estimates for OPN and AFP in the diagnosis of HCC in these studies as follows: sensitivity, 0.86 (0.79–0.91) vs 0.66 (0.53–0.76), specificity, 0.86 (0.69–0.94) vs 0.95 (0.87–0.98), positive likelihood ratio (PLR), 6.10 (2.43–15.32) vs 13.25 (4.69–37.49), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), 0.16 (0.09–0.28) vs 0.36 (0.26–0.51), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), 38.52 (8.99–165.08) vs 36.75 (11.04–122.32), and the area under the curve (AUC), 0.92 vs 0.87.

Our study demonstrates that OPN has a comparable accuracy to AFP for the diagnosis of HCC, while the value of OPN in combination with AFP for HCC detection deserves further investigation.