Prevalence of hepatitis C infection in Iranian hemodialysis patients: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of liver disease and a potential cause of substantial morbidity and mortality. Tis study aims to provide a comprehensive evidence on HCV Infection in Iranian hemodialysis (HD) patients we conducted a systematic review.
In this systematic review and meta-analysis, through a comprehensive search of literature until January of 2016, we estimated the pooled prevalence of hepatitis C infection in Iranian HD patients. Using Medical Subject Headings terms, Emtree, and related equal Persian key words for Iranian databases and also international databases of PubMed and NLM Gateway (for MEDLINE), and SCOPUS. Interest outcome of HCV infection prevalence was confirmed based on positive hepatitis B surface antigen of blood samples. Random effect meta-analysis was used to estimate pooled prevalence of HCV infection in Iranian HD patients, date and language, HD patients, in adult HD patients, Institute of Scientific Information, Iran-doc, irrespective of age, living in Iran. Searches run through main domestic databanks of Iran-Medex, renal transplantation, Scientific Information Database, the relevant literature-searched concentrating on HCV infection.
Trough searching steps, 305 publications were found from them following the excluding duplicates and overlapping studies 54 studies relevant to HCV prevalence in Iranian HD zcxw patients, with number of 23921 participants, remained in our analyses. Te overall results of test of heterogeneity demonstrate sever heterogeneity between reported prevalence (I2 = 96.62%, Chi-square = 1566, P Present paper is the comprehensive updated systematic review on HCV prevalence in the Iranian HD patients. Our findings provide the reliable evidence for promotion of policies and interventional programs.