The Frequency of HBsAg in Pregnant Women from Eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

[Context]The present study aimed to determine the prevalence of HBsAg in pregnant women using available data in Eastern Mediterranean Region Office (EMRO) and Middle Eastern countries from 2000 to 2016.[Evidence Acquisition]Pubmed, ISI Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Ovid, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Persian databases were searched for related articles on the prevalence of HBsAg in pregnant women in EMRO and Middle Eastern countries. Heterogeneity was assessed based on Cochran’s Q-test results. However, since this test may fail to exactly identify true heterogeneity, it was complemented with Higgins and Thompson’s I².[Results]In general the numbers of 49 articles (89 452 people) were included. Based on available data, the HBsAg prevalence in countries with at least one study conducted in them were 3.2% in Egypt, 1.3 % in Iran, 4.3% in Jordan, 1.5% in Libya, 7.1% in Oman, 2% in Pakistan, 1% in Qatar, 2.6% in Saudi Arabia, 5.6% in Sudan, 4% in Tunisia, 2.8% in Turkey, 1.5% in United Arab Emirates, and 10.8% Yemen.[Conclusions]The available data on the prevalence of HBsAg in pregnant women of EMRO and Middle East countries showed that there was a different pattern of HBsAg prevalence in studied countries. Although there were countries with low prevalence of HBsAg, the lowest frequency in our study was higher than the reported prevalence in developed countries.