Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in the Iranian pregnant women: A systematic review and meta-analysis

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Toxoplasmosis is a common and serious parasitic disease with high prevalence and
global distribution in human and other warm-blooded vertebrates. Though the infection of
Toxoplasma gondii is usually asymptomatic in healthy people, it can lead to severe
pathological effects to the fetus of infected women and in immunocompromised patients.
So pinpointing the risk factors and control procedures are of important works among these
populations. In order to reach this goal, we conducted a systematic review and meta
analysis to identify the seroprevalence rate of T. gondii infection among Iranian pregnant
women population to achieve a comprehensive explanation of the disease condition in Iran
for future use. English electronic databases (PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Ovid and
Cochrane) and Persian language databases (Scientific Information Database, Iran Medex,
Magiran and Iran Doc) were searched. Furthermore, the proceedings of Iranian
parasitology congresses were explored manually. Our review resulted in a total of 50
publications meeting the inclusion criteria during Jan 1990-June 2015. Totally, 20221
women had been tested during this period of which 7724 women had seropositivity for
IgG. According to results of heterogeneity test, either Der Simonian and Laird’s
random-effects method or Mantel-Haenszel’s fixed-effects method were used to pool the
estimations. Weighted overall prevalence of toxoplasmosis in pregnant women were
obtained using random-effects model, which was estimated 41% (95% CI = 36% – 45%).
Also IgG and IgM antibodies was obtained 38% (95% CI = 34% – 42%) and 4% (95% CI
= 3% – 5%), respectively. The highest and the lowest seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis in
five geographical zones of Iran were observed in South 53% (95% CI = 30% – 77%) and