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Meta-Analysis
. 2020 Feb 17;21(1):6.
doi: 10.1186/s12865-020-0335-7.

Inducible nitric oxide synthase and systemic lupus erythematosus: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Lu Pan  1   2 , Sirui Yang  2 , Jinghua Wang  2 , Meng Xu  2 , Shaofeng Wang  3 , Huanfa Yi  4
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Inducible nitric oxide synthase and systemic lupus erythematosus: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Lu Pan et al. BMC Immunol. .

Abstract

Background: There is a growing body of evidences indicating iNOS has involved in the pathogenesis of SLE. However, the role of iNOS in SLE is inconsistency. This systematic review was designed to evaluate the association between iNOS and SLE.

Results: Six studies were included, reporting on a total of 277 patients with SLE. The meta-analysis showed that SLE patients had higher expression of iNOS at mRNA level than control subjects (SMD = 2.671, 95%CI = 0.446-4.897, z = 2.35, p = 0.019), and a similar trend was noted at the protein level (SMD = 3.602, 95%CI = 1.144-6.059, z = 2.87, p = 0.004) and positive rate of iNOS (OR = 9.515, 95%CI = 1.915-47.281, z = 2.76, p = 0.006) were significantly higher in SLE group compared with control group. No significant difference was observed on serum nitrite level between SLE patients and control subjects (SMD = 2.203, 95%CI = -0.386-4.793, z = 1.64, p = 0.095). The results did not modify from different sensitivity analysis, representing the robustness of this study. No significant publication bias was detected from Egger's test.

Conclusions: There was a positive correlation between increasing iNOS and SLE. However, the source of iNOS is unknown. Besides NO pathway, other pathways also should be considered. More prospective random studies are needed in order to certify our results.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow diagram for identification of relevant studies
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Forest-plot representing the expression of iNOS at mRNA level between SLE patients and controls
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Forest-plot representing the expression of iNOS at protein level (staining score of iNOS) between SLE patients and controls
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Forest-plot representing the positive rate of iNOS between SLE patients and controls
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Forest-plot representing the serum nitrite elevation between SLE patients and controls
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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