Different Clinical Manifestations of Human Brucellosis in Pregnant Women: A Systematic Scoping Review of 521 Cases from 10 Countries

INTRODUCTION: This systematic scoping review aims to assess the frequency and severity of clinical manifestations of pregnant women with brucellosis. METHODS: Three literature databases, PubMed, Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and two search engines (Google and Yahoo) were adopted to identify the relevant articles that published until 31 December 2019. Two investigators independently screened the publications and extracted the data; the case reports and case series which described at least two symptoms or clinical manifestations of pregnant women with brucellosis were included. RESULTS: A total of 27 articles describing the information of 521 pregnant women with brucellosis were included. Serum agglutination test was the most common laboratory test in the diagnosis of brucellosis. A total of 36 clinical manifestations were extracted from the included articles, and the most common clinical manifestations were fever (400, 76.8%), joint pain/swelling/arthralgia (389, 74.7%), sweats (382, 73.3%), fatigue/asthenia/weakness (262, 50.3%) and back pain (189, 36.3%). Among the 32 included individual cases that with available obstetric outcome information, 10 (31.3%) suffered preterm delivery, 12 (37.5%) had an abortion and 3 (9.8%) had intrauterine fetal death. CONCLUSION: Brucellosis is popular and threatening for pregnant women. Regarding the localized body system complications, osteoarticular system was mostly involved, the obstetrics outcomes were severe among pregnant women with brucellosis. The detailed clinical and epidemiological characteristics in this scoping review may add a better and more complete understanding of the disease for both physicians and policy-makers, and provide evidence for timely diagnosis, adequate therapy and better prevention.