The prevalence of Eczema in Iranian children: A systematic review and Meta-Analysis

Eczema is a very common disorder that affects children. to find out thenational prevalence of eczema in iranian children, we conducted asystematic review and meta-analysis by using the google scholar,pubmed in medline area, altavista, iranmedex and magiran in august2013. the search terms included: prevalence, eczema, children,pediatric, allergy, isaac and iran. from 156 related articles based oncriteria, all the studies performed on children by the international study ofasthma and allergies in childhood protocol that contained eczemamanifestations were selected. the required informations from each studyincluded the authors name, date, city, size of population, prevalence ofeczema and number of children in elementary school age groups (6-7years) and junior high school (13-14 years). the information wasrecorded in designed tables. the extracted data were analyzed by stata11.in this study, we analyzed 16 studies including 56,424 children in whom28, 113 were in 6-7 years age group and 28, 311 in 13-14 years age group.the pooled prevalence of eczema in children aged 6-7 years and 13-14years was 5.98% and 6.52%, respectively.this review revealed the prevalence of eczema in iranian children. thisinformation can be helpful to identify and control eczema symptoms inchildren suffering from allergic disorders.