Prevalence of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency in India: An updated meta-analysis

BackgroundGlucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) is a house keeping enzyme which catalyzes the first step in the hexose monophosphate pathway of glucose metabolism. G6PD deficiency is the commonest hemolytic X-linked genetic disease, which affects approximately 400 million people worldwide. The prevalence rate of G6PD deficiency varies worldwide with a higher prevalence in malarial endemic population. In India several studies were published and reported with varying incidences of this disease in different populations.ObjectiveThe aim of the present study was to assess the overall frequency of G6PD deficiency in the Indian population using meta-analysis.MethodsPubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar and Springer Link databases were searched for studies that investigated G6PD deficiency in Indian population. If any author studied different sub-populations we treated the study as an independent study.ResultsA total of 72 studies with a total sample size of 38,565 and 2,623 G6PD deficient subjects were included in the present meta-analysis. Meta-analysis was performed in both fixed and random effect models. Meta-analysis with random model showed an overall prevalence proportion as 0.085 (95% CI = 0.070–0.103; p = 0.000; tau = 0.826; I2 = 0.486; Cochran Q = 0.999).ConclusionIn conclusion the present meta-analysis confirms the overall magnitude of the frequency of G6PD deficiency (8.5%) in the Indian population.