Prevalence of Osteoporosis in Postmenopausal Women in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Osteoporosis is a silent epidemic in the current era. While several studies in Iran have estimated the prevalence of osteoporosis at 8-77% in postmenopausal women, no rough estimate has been reported in this regard. The present study aimed to estimate the prevalence of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women in Iran.
This meta-analysis was conducted via searching in databases such as IranMedex, SID, Magiran, IranDoc, Medlib, ScienceDirect, Pubmed, Scopus, Cochrane, Embase, Web of Science, Medline, and Google Scholar using authentic Persian and English keywords, such as osteoporosis and postmenopausal, without a time limit for the studies published until 2017. Two researchers identified the relevant articles and extracted the data independently. Heterogeneity of the retrieved studies was assessed using the I2 index. Data analysis was performed in STATA software version 11 using the random effects model through a meta-analysis.
In total, 50 studies performed on 38,161 subjects were reviewed. The prevalence of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women in Iran was 32% (95% CI, 26-39%), and the prevalence of low bone density was estimated at 51%. The prevalence of osteoporosis was reported to be 32% in the lumbar spine, 21% in the spine, 25% in femoral neck, and 21% in the hip. Additionally, the prevalence of low bone density in the lumbar spine, spine, femoral neck, and hip was 39%, 29%, 26%, and 39%, respectively. Meta-regression showed no significant association between the prevalence of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women and year of the studies.
According to the results, about half of Iranian menopausal women have low bone density, which is a considered to be a significant predisposing factor for the incidence of osteoporosis and its complications.