The Prevalence of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Iranian Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most prevalent chronic liver disease which is created by the accumulation of fat in the liver. Several studies have reported the prevalence of fatty liver in Iran, with different results. Our goal is to estimate the Overall prevalence of fatty liver in Iranian children and adolescents. We searched the national and international databases (PubMed ,Science Direct ,Scopus ,Web of Science),) Magiran,Iran Medex , and Scientific Information Database) With keyword " prevalence ", "Nonalcoholic fatty liver", "fatty liver", "children", "adolescents" and "Iran" from the years 1998-2017. The variance of each study was calculated by the binomial distribution formula. We used a random effect model to combine the prevalence rates reported in the studies. The STATA software (version 12) was used to analyze the data. Eight studies were identified with of a total of 6118 subjects. The pooled prevalence of NAFLD in both population (male and female) was 27.88% (95%CI: 18.7% to 37.02%) .In both populations there was marked heterogeneity between studies (I2 = 99.3%). There was evidence that prevalence was generally higher in males compared with females .   Our review suggests the prevalence of NAFLD in children and adolescent is high, particularly in those who are obese and in males.