Good day, Ms. Donato

The inclusion criteria for selecting studies in the meta-analysis focused on the availability of detailed measurements such as sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios, and areas under the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve for serological tests detecting HDV antibodies. Furthermore, investigations were necessary to conduct PCR testing for HDV nucleic acids and HDV antibody tests, with reported true positives (TP), false positives (FP), true negatives (TN), and false negatives (FN). Studies with a minimum sample size of ten cases and published in English between 1989 and 2023 were considered. In contrast, research with less than 10 instances, case reports, review articles, or meta-analyses, as well as repeated studies or those lacking a clear gold standard for HDV diagnosis, were eliminated. These criteria aimed to ensure the inclusion of relevant and methodologically robust studies in the meta-analysis.

References:

Libguides: Systematic reviews : Inclusion and exclusion criteria. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria - Systematic Reviews - LibGuides at University of Texas School of Public Health. (n.d.). https://libguides.sph.uth.tmc.edu/SystematicReviews/InclusionAndExclusion#:~:text=Inclusion%20criteria%20is%20everything%20a,design%20for%20the%20research%20question.

Pan, Z.; Chen, S.; Xu, L.; Gao, Y.; Cao, Y.; Fan, Z.; Tian, Y.; Zhang, X.; Duan, Z.; Ren, F. Diagnostic Efficacy of Serological Antibody Detection Tests for Hepatitis Delta Virus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Viruses 2023,15,2345. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/v1512234