The Prevalence Rates of Acute Rheumatic Fever in Africa: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Background: Acute rheumatic fever (ARF) is an autoimmune disease that affects children. Objectives: The meta-analysis aimed to establish pooled prevalence values and heterogeneity in the prevalence values. Methods: The study’s published articles were searched using PubMed, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Google Scholar, and the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science. Results: The pooled total sample size was 386, 875 and the mean (SD) of the pooled sample size was 15 475 ± 24 765.988 at 95% intervals. The analysis revealed an estimated overall prevalence of acute rheumatic fever (ARF) in Africa of 1% under both the common and random effects models. The between-study variance (τ²) was 2.5043, and the I ² statistics- representing the percentage of total variability attributable to heterogeneity was extremely high at 98.2%. Conclusion: There is a clear statistical difference in prevalence rates and a high degree of heterogeneity in individual studies.