Prevalence of osteoporosis in the Iranian population: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The prevalence of osteoporosis increases as the population ages. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the prevalence of osteoporosis among the general population ≥ 50 years old in Iran.

Multiple databases including Scopus, WOS, Medline, Embase, and Persian databases (SID and Magiran) were systematically searched to identify relevant research papers. All population-based studies estimating the prevalence of osteoporosis in the Iranian population were included and imported into Endnote software. Two authors independently reviewed the articles. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used to assess the risk of bias. Statistical analysis was performed using Stata software, and a significance level of 0.05 was applied to the analyses.

Totally 2117 documents were retrieved from the databases up until October 11, 2022. After reading the full texts, 10 documents were included in the study. Our results indicated that the pooled prevalence of osteoporosis in the femoral neck region was 0.19 (95%CI: 0.12-0.26) and 0.19 (95%CI: 0.13-0.25) for women and men, respectively. Pooled prevalence of spinal osteoporosis was 0.29 (95%CI: 0.21-0.38) among women and 0.16 (95%CI: 0.12-0.19) among men. The total pooled prevalence of osteoporosis was 0.38 (95%CI: 0.29-0.48) for women and 0.25 (95%CI: 0.22-0.29) for men.

Our study highlights the elevated prevalence of osteoporosis among individuals aged 50 years and older, with females exhibiting higher rates. Notably, osteoporosis in the femoral neck region demonstrated the lowest prevalence in both sexes. The implementation of comprehensive strategies is imperative to address osteoporosis problems effectively.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40200-023-01352-9.