Epidemiology of Mycoplasma pneumoniae prevalence in Iranian patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Introduction. Mycoplasma pneumoniae is regarded as the important infectious agent of acute respiratory infections (ARIs) in the world. However, there is little knowledge about the prevalence of M. pneumoniae in Iran. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of M. pneumoniae in Iran through a meta-analysis of included studies.Methods. A systematic search was done by using electronic databases from papers that were published by Iranian authors to the end of February 2019. Then, 12 publications, which met our inclusion criteria, were enrolled for data extraction and analysis by using the 'metaprop program' in stata version 14.0.Results. The pooled prevalence of M. pneumoniae was 9 % (95 % confidence intervals: 5-16 %) ranging from 1 to 26 %. There was a significant heterogeneity among the 12 studies (X2=128.29; P<0.001; I 2=91.43 %). The funnel plot for publication bias showed no evidence of asymmetry.Conclusions. The frequency of M. pneumoniae in Iran is comparable with other parts of the world. Although the overall prevalence of M. pneumoniae was low, awareness about the distribution of these agent is very important because of higher infection rates in susceptible groups. In addition, these results showed the rates of M. pneumoniae had variation based on location, type of infection and sample, gender and detection rate and there was evidence of publication bias.