Association between overweight/obesity and risk of chronic rhinosinusitis: a prisma-compliant meta-analysis

Background: Previously increasing studies revealed that overweight/obesity patients were significantly higher in groups of patients with common otorhinolaryngological inflammatory diseases. Although there still may have some controversies remaining in the effect of overweight/obesity on CRS. Therefore, this study aimed to perform a meta-analysis to explore whether overweight/obesity is a significant risk factor for CRS. Methods In this meta-analysis, we comprehensively and systematically searched for relevant published literatures concerning the correlation between overweight/obesity and risk of CRS through applying a predefined search terms as follows: (“overweight” OR “obesity”) AND (“chronic rhinosinusitis” OR “nasal polyps” OR “CRS” OR “CRSsNP” OR “CRSwNP”) in the following databases: PubMed, Web of science, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar from inception to July 31, 2022. To explore the association between overweight/obesity and risk of developing CRS, multivariate odds ratio (OR) or relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were analyzed by using STATA software version16.0. This meta-analysis was registered with PROSPERO, CRD42022353658. Results Of 376 studies initially identified, only 7 studies concerning on the association between overweight/obesity and risk of CRS were eligible for the inclusion criteria eventually. The meta-analysis indicated that overweight was closely related to elevated risk of CRS (OR/RR = 1.04, 95%CI 0.90–1.18, P  < 0.001). Meanwhile, the meta-analysis suggested that obesity was significantly related to elevated risk of CRS (OR/RR = 1.01, 95%CI 0.99–1.03, P  < 0.001). Sensitivity analyses showed that there are no changes in the direction of effect when any one study was omitted from all meta-analyses. In addition, there was no significant risk of publication bias in this meta-analysis by performing Bgg’s test, Egger’s test, and funnel plot. Conclusion We found that overweight/obesity contributed to increasing the risk of developing CRS. Certainty, the result should be interpreted cautiously. Certainty, to obtain a more convincible result, more rigorous and high-quality clinical research will be warranted to be performed to evaluate the relationship between overweight/obesity and CRS in future.