ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in children aged 0-14 years and leukemia is the most prevalent of them among children in the world and Iran. Estimating cancer incidence is a vital tool in epidemiology and subsequent cancer control programs. The aim is to evaluate the crude incidence, age-specific incidence and standardized incidence rates of leukemia in these children in Iran through a meta-analysis.
METHODS. This is a systematic review and meta-analysis between 1950 and 2019. We searched national (Iran Medex, Mag Iran and Scientific Information Database) and international (Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, and the Web of Sciences) databases for this purpose. The quality of articles was evaluated using the guidelines checklist for critically appraising studies of the incidence of a health problem. After the quality assessment the random effect meta-analysis was used to estimate the incidence rates in overall and based on sex.
RESULTS. A total of 382 articles were identified in the search phase and finally, 15 studies were included. The crude incidence rate in the total population using the Random effect model was estimated at 29.29 (CI %95, 25.74-32.84) per one million children aged 0-14 years. This rate was 34.72 (CI %95, 28.85-40.59) in boys and 24.89 (CI %95, 20.28-29.5) in girls. According to the results, three provinces of Fars (51.48), Golestan (40.86) and Qazvin (35.82) had the highest prevalence, respectively.
CONCLUSION. Given that the incidence of leukemia in boys is higher than in girls and it is more drastic in some Iranian provinces, further attention should be dedicated to risk factors in boys and high risk locations in Iran to help prevent of incidence of this disease.