Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Department of Nutrition and Toxicology, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Front Public Health. 2022 Apr 27;10:874693. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.874693. eCollection 2022.
Respiratory viral infections (RVIs) are a major health concern, and some previous studies have shown that wearing masks was effective in preventing RVIs, while others failed to show such effect. Therefore, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of wearing masks.
PubMed, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, MEDLINE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese Scientific Journal Database (VIP database) were searched for studies evaluating the effectiveness of wearing masks. The risk ratio (RR) was used to measure the effectiveness of wearing masks in preventing RVIs for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and cohort studies, and the odds ratio (OR) was used for case-control studies. Forest plots were used to visually assess pooled estimates and corresponding 95% CIs. The test was used to examine the heterogeneity, and subgroup analysis was used to explore the possible explanations for heterogeneity or compare the results between subgroups. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess robustness of the synthesized results. Begg's test and Egger's test were used to assess the publications bias.
Thirty-one studies (13,329 participants) were eligible for meta-analyses. Overall, the results showed that wearing masks was effective in preventing RVIs. The sensitivity analysis showed that the results of those meta-analyses were robust and reliable. There was no significant publication bias in meta-analysis of case-control studies and most subgroup analyses.
Wearing masks might be effective in preventing RVIs. To reduce their RVI risk, people should wear masks when they go out in public.
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/, identifier: CRD42021296092.
呼吸道病毒感染（RVIs）是一个主要的健康关注点，一些先前的研究表明，戴口罩可以有效预防 RVIs，但也有一些研究未能显示出这种效果。因此，进行了一项系统评价和荟萃分析，以调查戴口罩的效果。
检索了 PubMed、ScienceDirect、Web of Science、Cochrane 图书馆、EMBASE、MEDLINE、中国知网（CNKI）和中国科技期刊数据库（VIP 数据库），以评估戴口罩预防 RVIs 的效果的研究。对于随机对照试验（RCTs）和队列研究，使用风险比（RR）来衡量戴口罩的效果，对于病例对照研究，使用比值比（OR）。森林图用于直观评估汇总估计值及其相应的 95%置信区间（CI）。 检验用于检验异质性，亚组分析用于探索异质性的可能解释或比较亚组之间的结果。进行敏感性分析以评估综合结果的稳健性。贝叶斯检验和伊格尔检验用于评估发表偏倚。
有 31 项研究（13329 名参与者）符合荟萃分析的条件。总体而言，结果表明戴口罩可以有效预防 RVIs。敏感性分析表明，这些荟萃分析的结果是稳健和可靠的。病例对照研究的荟萃分析和大多数亚组分析均未发现显著的发表偏倚。
戴口罩可能有助于预防 RVIs。为降低他们的 RVI 风险，人们在外出时应戴口罩。
