Temperature and Risk of Infectious Diarrhea: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Abstract There are many studies that have explored the relationship between temperature and the spread of infectious diarrhea (ID), but the results obtained are inconsistent. It is necessary to systematically evaluate the impact of temperature on the incidence of ID. ID is an intestinal infectious disease including cholera, typhoid and paratyphoid fever, bacterial and amebic dysentery, and other infectious diarrhea. This study is based on the PRISMA statement to report this systematic review. We conduct literature searches from CNKI, VIP databases, CBM, PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and other databases. The number registered in PROSPERO is CRD42021225472. Finally, after searching a total of 4,915 articles in the database and references, a total of 27 studies were included. The number of people involved exceeded 7.07 million. The overall result demonstrated when the temperature rises, there is a significant increase in infectious diarrhea (RRcumulative=1.42, 95%CI:1.07–1.88, RRsingle−day=1.08, 95%CI:1.03–1.14). Subgroup analysis found that the cumulative effect of temperature on the bacillary dysentery group and other diarrhea groups. The result of the single-day effect subgroup analysis was similar to the result of the cumulative effect. And the sensitivity analysis proves that the above results were robust. This systematic review and meta-analysis support that temperature will increase the risk of ID, which is helpful for ID prediction and early warning in the future.