Status of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus in ticks in Iran: A systematic review with meta-analysis

Abstract

Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a re-emerging viral haemorrhagic fever causing outbreaks in Iran in the last 15 years. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, the status of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) in ticks would be evaluated. PubMed, Google Scholar and Web of Science were searched for peer-reviewed original papers published between 2000 and 1 July 2022. We included papers that evaluated the prevalence of CCHFV in individual ticks using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The pooled prevalence of CCHFV was 6.0% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.5–7.9%), with heterogeneity (I2 = 82.706; P < 0.0001). The prevalence of CCHFV was higher related to regions with above sea level of 1001–1500m (6.4%; 95% CI: 4.3–9.5%), an average temperature of ≤15 °C (8.3%; 95% CI: 5.6–12.0%), latitude of ≥36° (8.1%; 95% CI: 5.2–12.3%), an annual rainfall of 101–300 mm (9.8%; 95% CI: 6.1–15.4%) and humidity of ≥61% (10.2%; 95% CI: 5.1–19.3%). Due to the importance of CCHF, it is better to do new epidemiologic studies on ticks by related organizations and adjacent regions of some provinces in which human cases have been previously reported.