Prevalence of cryptococcal meningitis in Asian countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis
摘要
Cryptococcal meningitis (CM) is a disease caused by pathogenic Cryptococcus spp., leading to neurologic manifestations such as headache, confusion or behavioral changes, and photophobia. The disease typically affects immunocompromised hosts such as persons living with HIV/AIDS and other comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, and tuberculosis infection. CM remains a major public health concern, affecting a number of countries globally with an estimated 223,000 cases annually. The exact prevalence of CM in specific regions across the world remains poorly documented, with underlying factors related to the geographic distribution of the disease still not fully understood. To address this concern, the current study aims to estimate the proportion of cases of CM across Asian countries and describe the geographic distribution of the disease through a systematic review and meta-analyses of related studies. All studies reporting the prevalence of CM across Asia were extracted from OVID Medline, Scopus, and EBSCO CINAHL. A review of title and abstracts was done independently by eight reviewers. The quality of the studies was assessed using the Newcastle–Ottawa scale [