Prevalence of iron deficiency anemia in Iranian children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background:

The most common type of anemia is iron deficiency anemia, which has attracted the attention of the health community in recent years. Therefore, the purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to determine the overall prevalence of iron deficiency anemia in Iranian children.

Materials and Methods:

This study is a systematic review and meta-analysis by examining Scientific Information Database (SID), Medline (PubMed), ScienceDirect and Google Scholar until October 2023. In this study, systematic review and meta-analysis, systematic search of the investigated databases, screening of articles, selection of studies according to the criteria of PRISMA 2020 statement were performed. The extracted information was entered into the Comprehensive meta-analysis software (version 2) and the publication bias of the studies was checked through the I² test of heterogeneity and through the Egger test.

Results:

 In the review of 13 studies with a sample size of 6516 Iranian children, the overall prevalence of iron deficiency anemia in Iranian children was 18.9% (95% CI 1.26-1.5%), the meta-regression results showed that with the increase in the sample size and the year of the research In the studied studies, the overall prevalence of iron deficiency anemia in Iranian children decreased significantly (P<0.05).

Conclusion:

The results of the present study show that the overall prevalence of iron deficiency anemia in Iranian children is high and requires the attention of health policymakers in this area to carry out extensive information and screening to prevent the effects of this disease in children.