Circulating chemerin levels in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a meta-analysis

The present meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the association between circulating chemerin levels and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in women. Relevant studies published up to May 2020 were searched from PubMed, Ovid, the Cochrane Library, and Clinical Trial Database. A random effects model was used to measure the strength of association between PCOS and chemerin by using the standardized mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence interval (CI). All data were analyzed using Stata 12.0 (version 12; Stata-Corp, College Station, TX). The final meta-analysis included eight studies with 15 results including a total of 897 participants (524 patients with PCOS and 373 controls). The circulating chemerin levels were higher in patients with PCOS (random effects SMD = 1.07; 95% CI: 0.55–1.59; <i>p</i> &lt; .001) than in controls. However, considerable heterogeneity across studies was not eliminated in subgroup analyses. The meta-regression analysis further suggested that region is the main source of heterogeneity (<i>p</i> = .001). Our meta-analysis indicated that women with PCOS have significantly higher circulating chemerin levels than in healthy women, indicating that chemerin may be involved in the pathogenesis of PCOS.