Investigating the role of circulating miRNAs as biomarkers in colorectal cancer: an epidemiological systematic review

Review question / Objective: What is the potential role of microRNAs as biomarkers of colorectal cancer. Eligibility criteria: Studies were considered eligible for the systematic review if they met the following criteria: 1) study patients have been diagnosed with CRC; 2) healthy individuals were used as controls; 3) biological samples were plasma or serum or blood; 4) results included any of AUC, sensitivity, and specificity and/or fold change values. Studies were excluded if they were: 1) reviews, meta-analyses, conference abstracts, letters; 2) animals or cells experiments; 3) studies that investigated prognosis, survival, or metastatic cancers only; 4) studies that investigated toxicity or therapy efficacy; 5) studies with insufficient data; 6) studies not published in English language.