Background:
Cimex lectularius is as a neglected urban pest that require blood meal from humans, other mammals or birds to survive. Bed bugs constitute an emerging public health problem and infestations have been reported from different countries in all over the worldwide.Objectives: The paper shows the distribution of the bed bug and meta-analysis evaluates the prevalence of the bed bug in Iran, during 1995 – 2019.Material and Methods: Various databases were investigated for choosing reliable researches by using keywords such as Bed Bug ,
Cimex lectularius ,
Prevalence , Outbreak and
Iran in the relevant electronic published data like Google scholar, Pubmed, Scopus from January 1995 to February 2019. Cochrane Q and I2 statistics were used to evaluate heterogeneity and inconsistency. Furthermore, Egger’s regression test was implemented to assess small study effects. According to results of heterogeneity test, the pool estimations of prevalence of common bedbug infestation and its 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated either using Der Simonian and Laird’s random effects method or Mantel Haenszel’s fixed effects method were used.Results: A total of 82 published articles were found through electronic database searching.Four papers have acceptance criteria for entrance to the study. The prevalence of bed bug was reported 2.8 to 90.1% in Iran, during 1995 to 2019 from Kohkiluye & Buyerahmad, Esfahan and Mazandaran Provinces. About 41% of the bite frequency was happened on the age group of 35-44 year old. Also, 38.3%, 23.7%, 14.4% and 3.9% of participants had bite on hand, abdomen and neck, respectively. . The Egger test showed that there is no small sample bias across studies (t=1.12, P=0.38). Furthermore, the results of the heterogeneity test showed that our studies were heterogeneous (Q=674, P<0.001& I2=99%).Conclusion:
Cimex lectularius can be called a neglected urban pest, which needs further investigation to know its distribution in Iran.