Prevalence of Infertility in Iran: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis

In the present study, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to determine the prevalence of infertility in Iran.

A search of studies was performed in June 2019 on Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science (WOS), Scientific Information Database (SID), Magiran, Irandoc and Google scholar using keywords related to infertility. The search for articles was limited to those published over the past 20 years in Persian and English lan - guages. In this research, only population-based studies were included.

The results of the analysis showed that the overall prevalence of infertility was 7.88%, 95% CI: 5.61- 10.51. The prevalence of primary and secondary infertility after sensitivity analyses was 3.09%, 95% CI: 2.27- 4.02 and 2.18%, 95% CI: 1.56-2.89, respectively. The slope of meta-regression line showed that the prevalence of primary ( P = .7) and secondary infertility ( P = .4) is rising with a slow slope in Iran.

It is emphasized that the results of this study are related to the areas where investigations have been conducted and that there is high heterogeneity in findings. Given that information is not available in all parts of Iran, a population-based study or the design and implementation of further research is suggested.