Prevalence of Helminthiasis among Anemic Children: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Anemia is a global problem, especially in tropical countries. Helminth infection is one of the common factors that cause anemia. It is caused by the parasite that takes the nutrition inside the body and blood, which can cause iron loss. This initiative investigates the prevalence of helminth infection in anemic children and the link between helminthiasis and anemia as a screening for a comprehensive review. The data was acquired from Wiley, PubMed, and Proquest to run the systematic review and transferred to a screening tool. The hits were evaluated, and Zotero and Rayyan were used to select the data. The data were extracted from journals containing comprehensive information regarding anemic children with helminth infection. Subanalysis was done by the age group, helminth types, and region. Review Manager was used to generate meta-analysis data. It shows 23 hits for data that can be used. The total prevalence of helminth infection in anemic children is 49.85% with 95% confidence interval. For the subanalysis, there is limited paper for each category, showing a different amount of paper for each. Africa has the highest number of cases of anemic children with 1545 compared to the other region. To conclude, the most anemic children are caused by the helminth, depending on the region and age. The most helminth that infects children is Trichuris Trichiura with 27.52% of prevalence.