Prevalence of infertility in women with genital tuberculosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Infertility is a worldwide concern which has a variety of causes. This study was aimed to investigate the prevalence of infertility in women with genital tuberculosis. A search of PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar and Cochrane databases (from 1990 to the present, date of last search February 2016) was performed using the keywords tuberculosis, genital tuberculosis, female genital, bacteriological, histological, infertility, primary infertility, secondary infertility, fallopian tube diseases, Asherman syndrome, women genital tract, fertility outcome, reproductive outcome,  prevalence, rate, percent in order to identify the studies which have reported the prevalence of infertility in women with genital tuberculosis. Data were extracted, and a meta-analysis was done. Seven studies were identified. The prevalence of infertility among women with genital TB with 95% confidence interval was 70.67% (58.30-83.03). Also, the prevalence of primary infertility and secondary infertility among genital tuberculosis cases were 75.70% (69.03-82.36) and 24.30% (17.64-30.97), respectively. The prevalence of infertility in women with genital tuberculosis is high. Therefore, prevention and treatment of genital tuberculosis can be considered as a way to reduce the infertility rate.