Abstract
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of studying newly emerging viruses that cause respiratory illnesses. Human bocavirus (HBoV) is one of the relatively newly discovered viruses that has been detected worldwide and causes respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, mainly in pediatric patients. However, little is known about the pathogenicity and evolution of HBoV. This systematic review was initiated to clarify the prevalence and circulating genotypes of HBoV in both respiratory and stool samples from patients of all age groups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from 2005 to February 2021. We performed an electronic search through Science Direct, Scopus, PubMed, Mendeley and Cochrane Library databases. We included all studies reporting the detection rate of HBoV in the MENA region. Data were extracted, and the quality of the included articles was assessed. We included articles containing data on HBoV only or with other respiratory or gastrointestinal viral infections. Review articles, case studies, and animal and environmental studies were excluded. The final number of articles included in this study was 65 articles. The results showed that the HBoV prevalence in children was the lowest in Iran (0%) and the highest in Egypt (56.8%). In adults, the lowest and the highest prevalence were reported in Iran, with values of 0% and 6.6%, respectively. Regarding the respiratory cases, our findings revealed no significant difference between HBoV prevalence among the tested categories (p-value = 0.998). The present study has shown that HBoV is common in children and adults in the MENA region. This systematic review highlights the need for more data on the role of coinfection of HBoV and other viruses, for instance, SARS-CoV-2 in children with acute bronchiolitis.
Highlights
Human bocavirus (HBoV) is a parvovirus reported for the first time in 2005 [1]
The present study has shown that HBoV is common in children and adults in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region
142,748 patients were reported in sixty-five studies, and 5622 (3.94%) were positive for infection. All those studies reported the prevalence of HBoV in the MENA
Summary
Human bocavirus (HBoV) is a parvovirus reported for the first time in 2005 [1]. An increasing number of reports have emerged indicating the common presence of the virus in the respiratory and gastrointestinal samples. HBoV is known to cause viral respiratory and gastrointestinal tract infections [1,2]. The pathogenicity of the virus is not fully understood [3,4]. As with other viruses that cause respiratory tract infections, HBoV can occur during any time of the year, with the highest incidence rate during winter and spring [5,6]. HBoV has been found in individuals of all ages, it was mainly reported in infants aged 6–24 months [4,5]
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