Prevalence of Invasive Streptococcus pneumoniae Infections among Iranian Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Streptococcus pneumoniae is an important pathogen of children, mostly in developing countries. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of invasive S. pneumoniae among Iranian children using a systematic review and meta-analysis.

A systematic search was carried out to identify papers published by Iranian authors in the Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar electronic databases from January of 2010 to December of 2017. Then, seven publications that met our inclusion criteria were selected for data extraction and analysis.

Totally, one study was multicenter, and six were single-center based studies. Meanwhile, all of the included studied performed among hospitalized patients. Seven studies reported the prevalence of invasive S. pneumoniae isolated from children, of these the pooled prevalence of S. pneumoniae was 2.5% (95% CI: 0.7%-9.1%).

The overall prevalence of invasive S. pneumoniae infections among Iranian children is low (2.5%). However, further clinical studies are required to elucidate the burden of infections among Iranian children, especially in eastern regions.