Prevalence of human West Nile virus infections in Iran: A systematic review and meta-analysis

The current systematic review and meta-analysis aims to estimate the prevalence of West Nile Virus (WNV) among humans in Iran. A comprehensive search was conducted in national databases, including SID, Magiran, and Barekat knowledge network and international databases, including Web of Science, MEDLINE, Embase, and Scopus, to identify articles on the prevalence of human WNV in Iran. A random-effects model was used to assess the pooled prevalence. A meta-regression method was applied to determine the factors affecting the heterogeneity among the studied population. Analysis was performed on 11 studies with a total sample size of 3747. The total pooled estimate for the prevalence of human WNV was 14.92% (95% CI: 9.13-20.71). The highest pooled prevalence was in Khuzestan (southwest Iran) (58.31%; 95% CI: 21.12-90.82), and the lowest were in East Azerbaijan (Central Iran) (0.0%; 95% CI: 0.0-7.11) and Mazandaran (north Iran) (0.0%; 95% CI: 0.0-1.69), respectively. Based on the results of univariate meta-regression, province (b: 0.35; p< .001) showed a significant direct association with the prevalence of human WNV, but other variables, including detection method, study population, publication year, and sample size, had no association with the prevalence of human WNV. The percentage of positive cases in serum samples shows that the WNV spreads in Iran.