Sage Open Pediatr. 2025 Jul 28;12:30502225251357145. doi: 10.1177/30502225251357145. eCollection 2025 Jan-Dec.
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 I² 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.
PMID:40735677 | PMC:PMC12304603 | DOI:10.1177/30502225251357145
