Meta-analysis: the diagnostic accuracy of lactose breath hydrogen or lactose tolerance tests for predicting the North European lactase polymorphism C/T-13910.

BACKGROUND:   The diagnostic accuracy of two indirect tests of lactose digestion, lactose breath hydrogen and lactose tolerance tests, have not been systematically reviewed for comparison with available publications on genotype.

AIM:   To perform a meta-analysis of available studies that compares the north-European genetic polymorphism C/T-13910 with the lactose breath hydrogen and the lactose tolerance tests, to determine their ability to predict geno/phenotype relationships. We examine the effects of lactose loading dose, inclusion of children and latitudes of study centre on comparative outcome.

METHODS:   An electronic database of the literature as well as individual references in articles were searched with the theme of genetics of lactase and comparisons with breath or lactose tolerance tests were carried out. Random effect and fixed effect models were used for breath and lactose tolerance tests respectively, to report summary accuracy measures with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

RESULTS:   The search revealed 19 studies: 17 evaluated breath hydrogen, five lactose tolerance test (3/17 overlapped). Overall sensitivity was 0.88 (CI, 0.85-0.90), specificity was 0.85 (CI, 0.82-0.87) for breath test. Heterogeneity was explored by adjusting for studies including children, high or low dose lactose and to some extent by site of study. The lactose tolerance test showed sensitivity of 0.94 (0.9-0.97) and specificity of 0.90 (0.84-0.95) with a nonsignificant heterogeneity.

CONCLUSION:   The diagnostic accuracy of both tests individually reflects expected geno/phenotypes when the populations are well defined.