Prevalence of human bocavirus infections in Europe. A systematic review and meta‐analysis

Human bocaviruses (HBoVs) are recently described as human emergent viruses, especially in young children. In this study, we undertook a systematic review and meta‐analysis to estimate their prevalence in Europe. PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases were systematically screened for clinical studies, up to October 2020. Study eligibility criteria were primary full‐text articles from clinical studies, conducted using valid screening test methods and published in peer‐reviewed journals, in English or Spanish and from European countries. The overall pooled prevalence, prevalence by country as well as the prevalence of HBoV as a single or co‐pathogen were estimated using a random‐effects model. Sub‐group and meta‐regression analyses explored potential sources of heterogeneity in the data. A total of 35 studies involving 32,656 subjects from 16 European countries met the inclusion criteria. Heterogeneity (I2 = 97.0%, p