Mokammel Adel, Malkawi Mazen, Momeniha Fatemeh, Safi Heba Adel Moh'd, Niazi Sadegh, Yousefian Fatemeh, Azimi Faramarz, Naddafi Kazem, Shamsipour Mansour, Roostaei Vahid, Faridi Sasan, Hassanvand Mohammad Sadegh
Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Center for Air Pollution Research (CAPR), Institute for Environmental Research (IER), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
J Environ Health Sci Eng. 2023 Jun 5;21(2):295-304. doi: 10.1007/s40201-023-00862-1. eCollection 2023 Dec.
The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) countries suffer from exposure to high levels of ambient air pollutants due to dust storms and have unique climatic as well as topographic and socio-economic conditions which lead to adverse health effects on humans. The purpose of the review was to evaluate the quantity and quality of published articles on air pollution and health-based studies in 22 EMR countries to determine if they can be applied to adopting air quality standards.
We designed a review based on a broad search of the literature in the Scopus, PubMed, and web of science (WOS) databases published from January 1, 2000, to January 2, 2022, using combinations of the following relevant terms: air pollution, health, and EMR countries. The generic eligibility criteria for this review were based on the population, exposure, comparator, outcome, and study design (PECOS) statement.
The search results showed that following the PRISMA approach, of 2947 identified articles, 353 studies were included in this review. The analysis of the types of studies showed that about 70% of the studies conducted in EMR countries were Health Burden Estimation studies (31%), Ecological and time trend ecological studies (23%), and cross-sectional studies (16%). Also, researchers from Iran participated in the most published relevant studies in the region 255 (~ 63%) and just 10 published documents met all the PECOS criteria.
The lack of sufficient studies which can meet the PECOS appraising criteria and the lack of professionals in this field are some of the issues that make it impossible to use as potential documents in the WHO future studies and adopt air quality standards.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40201-023-00862-1.
东地中海区域（EMR）国家因沙尘暴而暴露于高水平的环境空气污染物中，且具有独特的气候、地形和社会经济条件，这些因素会对人类健康产生不利影响。本综述的目的是评估22个EMR国家发表的关于空气污染与健康研究的文章数量和质量，以确定这些研究是否可用于采用空气质量标准。
我们基于对Scopus、PubMed和科学网（WOS）数据库中2000年1月1日至2022年1月2日发表的文献进行广泛检索来设计本综述，使用以下相关术语的组合：空气污染、健康和EMR国家。本综述的通用纳入标准基于人群、暴露、对照、结局和研究设计（PECOS）声明。
检索结果显示，按照PRISMA方法，在2947篇已识别的文章中，本综述纳入了353项研究。对研究类型的分析表明，在EMR国家开展的研究中，约70%是健康负担估计研究（31%）、生态和时间趋势生态研究（23%）以及横断面研究（16%）。此外，伊朗的研究人员参与了该区域发表的相关研究最多，有255项（约63%），只有10篇发表的文献符合所有PECOS标准。
缺乏足够符合PECOS评估标准的研究以及该领域缺乏专业人员是一些导致无法将其用作世界卫生组织未来研究的潜在文献以及采用空气质量标准的问题。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s40201-023-00862-1获取的补充材料。
