The disease burden of childhood asthma in China: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: In China, childhood asthma prevalence showed a remarkable increase in the past decades. An updated epidemiological assessment of childhood asthma in China with a focus on prevalence and time trends is required. Methods: We systematically searched three main Chinese databases and one English database to identify epidemiological studies of the prevalence of childhood asthma in China. Asthma cases were defined according to one of the five sets of Chinese diagnostic criteria which were established by the Children Respiratory Disease Group. We estimated age- and sex-specific prevalence of asthma using a multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression. We presented the time trends of asth..