The global prevalence of highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N8) infection in birds: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

The zoonotic pathogen avian influenza A H5N8 causes enormous economic losses in the poultry industry and poses a serious threat to the public health. Here, we report the first systematic review and meta-analysis of the worldwide prevalence of birds. We filtered 45 eligible articles from seven databases. A random-effects model was used to analyze the prevalence of H5N8 in birds. The pooled prevalence of H5N8 in birds was 1.6%. In the regions, Africa has the highest prevalence (8.0%). Based on the source, village (8.3%) was the highest. In the sample type, the highest prevalence was organs (79.7%). In seasons, the highest prevalence was autumn (28.1%). The largest prevalence in the sampling time was during 2019 or later (7.0%). Furthermore, geographical factors also were associated with the prevalence. Therefore, we recommend site-specific prevention and control tools for this strain in birds and enhance the surveillance to reduce the spread of H5N8.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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