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Prevalence of Cryptosporidium Infection in the Global Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

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Abstract

Background

Cryptosporidium is a protozoan parasite that can infect both humans and animals and cause cryptosporidiosis. We aimed to estimate the global prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection.

Methods

In this study, Web of Science, Medline and PubMed were searched for relative articles, published between January 1, 1960 and January 1, 2018. Included articles were restricted to English language and that sample size of articles was not less than 50. Studies with no information on the study period, location, method of diagnosis, sample size and number of infected people were excluded. Studies about outbreak, laboratory report or immunocompromised population were excluded as well. The quality of the included publications was assessed. The prevalence of cryptosporidiosis was estimated by DerSimonian–Laird random-effects model, after converting by the Freeman–Tukey type double arcsine transformation.

Findings

From 13,064 publications selected by literature search, 221 studies were included in the meta-analysis. The global pooled prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection was 7.6 % (95% CI: 6.9–8.5). The highest estimated prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection was in Mexico (69.6%, 95% CI 66.3–72.8), Nigeria (34.0%, 95% CI 12.4–60.0), Bangladesh (42.5%, 95% CI 36.1–49.0) and Republic of Korea (8.3%, 95% CI 4.4–13.2) among general residents, patients, school children and healthy population, respectively. The estimated prevalence was high in people from low-income country, people with gastrointestinal symptoms, people younger than 5 years old and residents not living in urban areas.

Conclusions

These estimates indicate the substantial prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection in the world, which may provide a theoretical basis for the formulation of the prevention strategy about Cryptosporidium.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Wangting Cheng for her assistance with the search strategy and technical support in using the statistical analysis software.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fudan University School of Public Health, Xuhui District, Building 8, 130 Dong An Road, Shanghai, 200032, China

    Shurong Dong, Ya Yang, Yingjian Wang, Dongjian Yang, Yu Yang, Ying Shi, Chunlin Li, Linhan Li, Qingwu Jiang & Yibiao Zhou

  2. Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Fudan University, Ministry of Education, Building 8, 130 Dong An Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, 200032, China

    Shurong Dong, Ya Yang, Yingjian Wang, Dongjian Yang, Yu Yang, Ying Shi, Chunlin Li, Linhan Li, Qingwu Jiang & Yibiao Zhou

  3. Fudan University Center for Tropical Disease Research, Building 8, 130 Dong An Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, 200032, China

    Shurong Dong, Ya Yang, Yingjian Wang, Dongjian Yang, Yu Yang, Ying Shi, Chunlin Li, Linhan Li, Qingwu Jiang & Yibiao Zhou

  4. School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON, K1H 8M5, Canada

    Yue Chen

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  1. Shurong Dong
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Contributions

YZ designed this study. SD, YY, and YW developed retrieval strategies and collected relevant literature. Yu Yang and YS formulated quality evaluation criteria. DY, CL, LL, YY, YS and SD contributed to screening related literature and extracting data. YZ, SD and YY analyzed the extracting data. YW, YC and QJ reviewed the results and contributed to writing conclusions in this study. YZ and SD wrote the first draft. All authors had put forward valuable opinions and approved the final version before submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yibiao Zhou.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Dong, S., Yang, Y., Wang, Y. et al. Prevalence of Cryptosporidium Infection in the Global Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Acta Parasit. 65, 882–889 (2020). https://doi.org/10.2478/s11686-020-00230-1

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