the prevalence of eczema in iranian children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

eczema is a very common disorder that affects children. to find out the national prevalence of eczema in iranian children, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis. we conducted a literature review by using the google scholar, pubmed in medline area, altavista, iranmedex and magiran in august 2013. the search terms included: prevalence, eczema, children, pediatric, allergy, isaac and iran. from 156 related articles based on criteria, all the studies performed on children by the international study of asthma and allergies in childhood protocol that contained eczema manifestations were selected. the required informations from each study included the authors name, date, city, size of population, prevalence of eczema and number of children in elementary school age groups (6-7 years) and junior high school (13-14 years). the information was recorded in designed tables. the extracted data were analyzed by stata 11. in this study, we analyzed 16 studies including 56,424 children in whom 28,113 were in 6-7 years age group and 28,311 in 13-14 years age group. the pooled prevalence of eczema in children aged 6-7 years and 13-14 years was 5.98% and 6.52%, respectively. this review revealed the prevalence of eczema in iranian children. this information can be helpful to identify and control eczema symptoms in children suffering from allergic disorders.