The Prevalence of Human Papillomavirus in Iranian Women’s: A Comprehensive Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Cervical cancer (CC) is one of the most common women’s malignancies in the world. Besides, the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is considered the main cause of CC incidence. Thus, this systematic review and meta-analysis study aimed to estimate the overall prevalence of HPV in Iranian women.

For paper collection, various databases were searched including; Scientific Information Database (SID), Medline (PubMed), ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar (by November 2022). The extracted data were imported into the Comprehensive Meta-analysis software (CMA, v.2). Publication bias and the heterogeneity indices were assessed using I² and Egger tests.

Following the assessment of 26 eligible studies with a sample size of 5.560, the overall prevalence of HPV in Iranian women was detected 23% (95%CI: 14.3–34.9%). The highest (95%CI: 88.8–99.2%) and the lowest (95%CI: 1–4.8%) prevalence of HPV were detected in Tehran and Isfahan provinces with 97% and 2.2%, respectively. The meta-regression analysis also showed that the HPV prevalence decreases significantly (p < 0.05) by the acceleration of sample size. Also, a significant (p < 0.05) direct relationship between the year of research and the HPV prevalence was detected.

The HPV prevalence in Iranian women was found at a high level requiring special attention by health policymakers. Extensive public awareness of Iranian women along with clinical screenings seem necessary to prevent the severe effects of HPV and CC incidence.