Asthma prevalence in Iranian guidance school children, a descriptive meta-analysis

Background: The morbidity and mortality of asthma have risen among children, especially those under 18, during the past 3 to 4 decades. There are various single studies in different target populations of Iran, which have reported different estimations. The present study designed in order to estimate a pooled prevalence among Iranian guidance school children. Materials and Methods: After searching for relevant articles in international and local databases from 1997 to 2009, we found 16 relevant articles and studies having the inclusion criteria. The outcome measure was the prevalence of asthma, and forest plot was used for presenting the findings of the meta-analysis. Heterogeneity between the studies was evaluated by the Cochran test. Moreover, the random effects model was used for estimation of pooled measures in Stata software (version 10). Results: From all the entered studies, 10 articles were published in English and the rest in Persian language. The pooled estimates for females, males and both genders were calculated as 3.9% (95% CI: 3.2% - 4.6%), 5% (95% CI: 4.2% - 5.8%), and 4.4% (95% CI: 3.7% - 5.1%), respectively. Conclusion: The prevalence of asthma among Iranian children varied from 1.26% to 11.6%, which is possibly due to the difference in sex, ethnicity race, and socio-economic level of Iranian population. Also, the prevalence of asthma among Iranian guidance school children was lower in comparison to the other neighborhood countries.