“…Next, we carried out the subgroup analysis by Meta-Disc 1.4 based on gender ratio, mean age, ethnicity, case number of RA patients, control groups, and study design. As shown in Table S1, after grouping, both the inconsistency (1-square) of pooled sensitivity and specificity decreased in African and European groups, in Asian populations, 15,17,[24][25][26]28,29 the pooled sensitivity had no apparent change Table S1, in healthy and disease control, [16][17][18]25,26,[28][29][30][31][32] the diagnostic value of pooled sensitivity decreased to 0.67 (0.65-0.70) and pooled specificity had no apparent change (0.88 [0.86-0.90]); however, in healthy controls, 15,24,27 both the pooled sensitivity (0.96 [0.93-0.98]) and specificity (0.90 [0.84-0.95]) increased, and both the inconsistency (1-square) of pooled sensitivity and specificity decreased. Overall, these results suggested that ethnicity and control groups may be a major source of heterogeneity.…”