Acute kidney injury in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Iran; a systematic review and meta-analysis

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is one of the complications in COVID-19 patients, which is reported with widely varied incidence rates in different studies and is known to have a major impact on prognosis and outcome of the disease. It is noticed that there are considerable differences in AKI rates between different countries. Rates in China are generally much lower than in Western Europe and the United States. One of the potential explanations is heterogeneity along racial and ethnic lines. This study aims to systematically investigate the scientific resources regarding AKI prevalence among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Iran, and run a meta-analysis on currently published data. Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases were searched to identify the articles discussing the occurrence of AKI in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in Iran. All observational and interventional studies with English full-text providing necessary data for analysis were included with no limitation in time of release or peer-review. Around, 4069 confirmed cases (age; 10-94) from 22 studies were included in the pooled outcome measurement. The proportion of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in Iran who developed AKI was 24% (95% CI: 17-31%). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review and meta-analysis to measure the prevalence of AKI in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Iran. The geographical dissimilarities in the proportion of AKI among COVID-19 patients suggest a role for ethnical and racial differences in the tendency to develop renal involvement.