Prevalence and Risk Factors of Gestational Diabetes in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Gestational Diabetes (GD) is one of the major public health issues. The purpose of the present study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the risk factors and prevalence rate of this disorder in Iran. METHODS: This systematic review and meta- analysis article was prepared using the databases of Science Direct, Pub-Med, Scopus, Magiran, Iranmedex and SID, Google search engine, Gray Literature, reference lists check and hand searching using keywords such as “prevalence”, “gestational diabetes mellitus”, “GDM”, “risk factor*”, “Iran” and “Postpartum Diabetes”. The selected papers were fully reviewed and the required information for the systematic review was extracted and summarized using extraction table in Microsoft Office Excel software. RESULTS: Twenty-four of 1011 papers were quite relevant to the objectives of the review so they were included. The mean age of the participants was 29.43±4.97 yr and the prevalence of GDM was 3.41% (the highest and the lowest prevalence rates were 18.6% and 1.3% respectively). Among the influential factors mentioned in the literature, potential causes of GDM are gestational age, history of gestational diabetes, family history of diabetes, body mass index, abortions and parity, and history of macrosomia. CONCLUSION: Considering the high prevalence of postpartum diabetes and its related factors in Iran, strategic planning for disease prevention and reduction is inevitable.