Worldwide prevalence of viral infection in AECOPD patients: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Background and objective

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic progressive lung disease. On the other hand, viral infections of the airway are associated with the acute exacerbations of COPD. A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to determine the prevalence rate of viral infections in acute exacerbations of COPD patients.

Methods

PubMed database was systematically searched for population-based prevalence studies (1930–2017). Fixed and random effects models were used for estimation of summary effect-sizes. Between-study heterogeneity and publication bias were also calculated. “Viral infections” and “COPD patients with exacerbations” were the two critical inclusion criteria.

Results

Twenty-eight studies were selected out of 26078 articles for the present review. The overall estimation of the prevalence of viral infection was 0.374 (95% C.I: 0.359–0.388). Also, the evident heterogeneity of viral infection was observed among the studies (Cochran Q test, p value < 0.001 and I-squared = 97.5%). The highest and lowest prevalence rate was related to rhinovirus and echovirus, respectively. Also, the results of this study showed that the prevalence of viral infection in exacerbated COPD patients has fluctuation during the years with a slight increase and decrease.

Conclusions

The results of this systematic review demonstrated that respiratory viral infections have an important role in the acute exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD). In addition, determining the exact geographic epidemiology of these viruses is very important to manage the treatment of these infections.

Highlights

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  Rhinovirus and Echovirus were the most and least common viruses.

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  The prevalence of viral infection had a fluctuation by the year of publication.

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  PCR resulted in the highest rate of viral detection.