Listeria monocytogenes in Dairy Products of the Middle East Region: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Meta-Regression Study

BACKGROUND: The contamination of food products by Listeria monocytogenes as a pathogen bacterium, threatening public health and raised a global concern for a long time. Dairy and meat products and ready-to-eat foods are recognized as the most common carriers for L. monocytogenes. METHODS: The related reports of the prevalence of L. monocytogenes in dairy products in Middle East countries from 2009 to 2020 were screened through some of the international databases such as Science Direct, Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar. While a random effect model was applied to estimate pooled or overall prevalence, 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were used. RESULTS: Results showed severe heterogeneity (84.2%) in studies and estimated the overall prevalence of L. monocytogenes dairy food products from the Middle East region of 3.5% (CI: 2.2–5). The highest and lowest prevalence was associated with Jordan (17.6% CI: 9.8–26.9) and Iraq (1.6% CI: 0.3–3.7), respectively. Based on the type of product, the highest and lowest prevalence of L. monocytogenes was recognized for raw cow milk (5.8% CI: 2.7–9.7) and pasteurized cow milk (1.1% CI: 0–8), respectively. CONCLUSION: There is no justification for severe heterogeneity (I(2)) of subgroups as prevalence is heterogenic innately, but Jordan and row cow milk subgroups were found to have a considerable effect on overall pooled prevalence. Thus, they were the reason for prevalence changes.