Prevalence and factors associated with fertility desire among people living with HIV: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: The fertility desire of people living with HIV (PLHIV) has been rising in the past decade. However, there are many studies among which the association remains controversial between the fertility desire of HIV-infected persons and antiretroviral therapy (ART), sex, marital status, and educational level. METHODS: We performed a literature search of these meta-analyses in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science and ScienceDirect in November 2019. We also reviewed references of eligible studies to complement the search. We used pooled odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) with a random-effects model and a fixed-effects model to estimate the association between fertility desire among PLHIV and ART, sex, age, marital status, educational level, and number of children. Subgroups with I square values (I(2)) and sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the heterogeneity and the stability of the overall ORs, respectively. We evaluated publication bias using Egger’s test and a visual inspection of the symmetry in funnel plots. RESULTS: In these meta-analyses 50 articles were included with 22,367 subjects. The pooled prevalence of fertility desire among PLHIV was estimated to be 42.04%. The pooled analyses showed that the fertility desire of PLHIV is associated with ART (OR = 1.11, 95% CI:1.00–1.23, P = 0.043), sex (OR = 1.51, 95% CI:1.10–2.09), age (OR = 2.65, 95% CI:2.24–3.14), marital status (OR = 1.34, 95% CI:1.08–1.66), educational level (OR = 0.85, 95% CI:0.73–1.00, P = 0.047) and the number of children (OR = 3.99, 95% CI:3.06–5.20). PLHIV who are on ART, are male, are younger than 30, are married/cohabiting, have received a secondary education or above, and are childless have a higher prevalence of fertility desire. The two factors of age and the number of children, in particular demonstrated a strong significant association with fertility desire. We found moderate heterogeneity in the meta-analyses of age and educational level and high heterogeneity in the meta-analyses of sex, marital status and number of children. Publication bias was detected in the meta-analyses of the association of fertility with sex and educational level. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that the prevalence of fertility desire among HIV-infected people is 42.04%, and the fertility desire among PLHIV is associated with ART experience, sex, age, marital status, the number of children, and educational level. Since a majority of PLHIV are of reproductive age, it is necessary to support PLHIV in terms of their needs regarding reproductive decision-making. Through counseling and reproductive health care, further measures to prevent the horizontal and vertical transmission of HIV should be taken.