Epidemiology of brucellosis in Iran: A comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis study

Brucellosis is still one of the most challenging issues for health and the economy in many developing countries such as Iran. Considering the high prevalence of brucellosis, the aim of the current study was to systematically review published data about the annual incidence rate of this infection from different parts of Iran and provide an overall relative frequency (RF) for Iran using meta-analysis. We searched several databases including PubMed, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, google scholar, IranMedex and Iranian Scientific Information Database (SID) by using the following keywords: “Brucella”, “Brucellosis”, “Malta fever”, “Mediterranean fever”, “undulant fever”, “zoonosis” and “Iran” in Title//Keywords fields. Articles/s, which used clinical specimens and reported the incidence of brucellosis, were included in this review. Quality of studies was assessed by STROB and PRISMA forms. All statistical analyses were performed using STATA 11.0 (STATA Corp, College Station, TX) and P-values under 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Out of the 8326 results, we found 34 articles suitable, according to inclusion and exlusion criteria, for inclusion in this systematic review and meta-analysis. The pooled incidence of brucellosis was estimated 0.001% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.0005-0.0015%) annually. Relative frequency of brucellosis in different studies varied from 7.0/100000 to 276.41/100000 in Qom and Kermanshah provinces, respectively. This systematic-review and meta-analysis study showed that the highest incidences of brucellosis are occurred in west and northwest regions of Iran. Totally, the incidence of the disease in Iran is in the high range.