Background: Dengue is one of the common arboviral infections and is a public health problem in South East Asia. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the prevalence and distribution of dengue in SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries.
Methods: The PubMed, PubMed Central, Embase and Scopus databases were searched for relevant studies. Statistical analysis on data extracted from the selected studied was conducted using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Software (CMA) version 3 software package. Proportions were used to estimate the outcome with a 95% confidence interval (CI).
Results: Across all studies, among cases of suspected dengue, 30.7% were confirmed dengue cases (proportion: 0.307, 95% CI: 0.277-0.339). The seroprevalence of dengue immunoglobulin (Ig)G, IgM or both (IgM and IgG) antibodies and dengue NS1 antigen was 34.6, 34.2, 29.0 and 24.1%, respectively. Among the different strains of dengue, dengue virus (DENV) strains DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3 and DENV-4 accounted for 21.8, 41.2, 14.7 and 6.3% of cases, respectively. The prevalence of dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome was 80.5, 18.2 and 1.5%, respectively. Fever was a commonly reported symptom, and thrombocytopenia was present in 44.7% of cases. Mortality was reported in 1.9% of dengue cases.
Conclusions: Dengue is a common health problem in South East Asia with high seroprevalence. DENV-2 was found to be the most common strain causing infection, and most dengue cases were dengue fever. In addition, thrombocytopenia was reported in almost half of the dengue cases.
Keywords: Dengue; Dengue fever; Dengue shock syndrome; SAARC region.
© 2022. The Author(s).