Search result
Our electronic and manual search for eligible articles resulted in the identification of 1970 articles. From these records, 46 articles were duplicate articles and therefore removed in the initial stage. From the remaining 1924 articles, only 66 were obtained eligible for a full-text revision after the remaining were excluded at the different steps of screening. In the end, only twenty-eight research articles were found to be eligible and included in the analysis (Figure 1).
Characteristics of studies included
A total of twenty-eight studies (11-13, 15, 17, 25, 33-54) that studied our outcome of interest; alcohol use disorder (AUD) in thirty thousand eight hundred fifty-four (30854) tuberculosis patients on treatment with anti-tuberculosis medications were included in the present review. Considering the regional setting where the included studies were done; six (17, 25, 35, 37, 38, 47), five (40, 45, 46, 48, 49) and another five studies were from Russia, South Africa (33, 34, 50, 51, 53) and Ethiopia (33, 34, 50, 51, 53) respectively. The remaining studies were from United States (US) (11, 36), Estonia (41, 42), India (12, 43, 52, 54), Thailand (44), Nigeria (39), Botswana (15), and Zambia (13). Most of the studies in the present analysis were Cohort (25, 35, 38, 40, 44, 46, 48, 51-53) and cross-sectional (12, 13, 17, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 43, 45, 49, 50).
One -third of the studies included (11, 12, 15, 17, 25, 34, 44-49, 51-53) used the Alcohol use disorder identification test (AUDIT) to measure alcohol use disorder in tuberculosis patients. Besides two studies (13, 39) measured AUD with mini-international neuropsychiatric-interview(MINI), one (33) with alcohol, smoking, and substance involvement screening test(ASSIST), and another one used DSM-IV (37). However, eight of the studies (35, 36, 38, 40-43, 50) did not report the assessment tool for the measurement of AUD. Regarding the setting of anti-tuberculosis treatment, seven (13, 17, 33, 45, 46, 48, 49), thirteen (11, 12, 25, 35, 38-41, 43, 44, 47, 52) and another seven (34, 36, 42, 50, 51, 53) of the included studies involved subjects with treatment setting at the primary health care setting (PHCU), hospital and both hospital and PHCU respectively. Also, twenty (11, 12, 33, 35, 37, 38, 43-46, 49, 51-53), four (17, 25, 42, 47) and three (34, 36, 50) of the studies involved participant patients at the directly observed treatment(DOT), continuation and both phases of ant-tuberculosis treatment in the respective order (Table 1).
The 1-year prevalence of alcohol use disorder among tuberculosis patients
Twenty-seven studies (11-13, 15, 17, 25, 33-53) had reported the prevalence of alcohol use disorder among tuberculosis patients. The reported prevalence of alcohol use disorder among tuberculosis patients among studies included in this review ranges from 4.4% in a review from Ethiopia (34) to 63% in Russia(37) and South Africa (40). The average prevalence of alcohol use disorder among tuberculosis patients using the random effect model was found to be 30% (95% CI: 24.00, 35.00). This average prevalence of AUD was with a slight heterogeneity (I2 = 57%, p-value < 0.001) from the difference between the twenty-seven studies (Figure 2).
The relationship between gender and AUD
Four of the included studies (13, 25, 36, 48) have reported the prevalence of AUD in line with the sex of the participants. The average prevalence of AUD in male participants as reported by the above studies was 33.6% (95% CI: 30.65%, 36.55%) and this was higher than the average prevalence of AUD in females 11.67% (95% CI: 7.81, 15.54%).
Subgroup analysis of the 1-year prevalence of alcohol use disorder among tuberculosis patients
A subgroup analysis was done considering the mean age of review participants, the continent at which the review was done, study design, and assessment tool used. The average prevalence of alcohol use disorder in tuberculosis patients was higher in Asia and Europe;37% (11, 12, 17, 25, 35-38, 41-44, 47, 52) than the prevalence in US ; 24% (11, 36) and Africa ; 24% (13, 15, 33, 34, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48-51, 53) (Figure 3). The average prevalence of AUD was 36% in studies that do not report the assessment tool for AUD (35, 36, 38, 40-43, 50) which is higher than the prevalence in studies that utilized AUDIT (26%) (11, 12, 15, 17, 25, 34, 44-49, 51-53) (Figure 4). Besides, studies which were case-control(15, 39, 41) provided higher prevalence of AUD (39%) than cross-sectional (12, 13, 17, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 43, 45, 49, 50)(30%), cohort (25, 35, 38, 40, 44, 46, 48, 51-53)(30%) and RCT studies (11, 47)(20%). Last but not least the average prevalence of AUD was 42% in studies with a mean age of the participants 40 years and above higher than the average prevalence of AUD in participants with a mean age of < 40 years (24%) and mean age not reported (27%) (Table2).
Sensitivity Analysis
We further investigated the source of heterogeneity by doing a leave-one-out sensitivity analysis to identify whether individual studies out weighted the average prevalence of AUD. Our result revealed that the average prevalence of AUD obtained when each study was omitted at a time from the analysis ranges between 28% (23.00, 35.00) and 31% (25.00, 36.00). This implied that the average prevalence of AUD among tuberculosis patients was not out weighted by a single review (Table 3).
Publication Bias
The egger's publication bias plot is near the origin and Egger’s tests p-value was (P=0.58) showing the absence of publication bias for the prevalence of AUD among tuberculosis patients. This was also supported by asymmetrical distribution on the funnel plot for a Logit event rate of prevalence of AUD in tuberculosis patients against its standard error (Figure 5).
Factors associated with alcohol use disorder among tuberculosis patients
Among twenty-eight studies (11-13, 15, 17, 25, 33-53) included in the present meta-analysis, only eight (11-13, 25, 36, 37, 44, 48) reported the associated factors for alcohol use disorder among tuberculosis patients. Our qualitative synthesis for the socio-demographic factors associated with AUD in tuberculosis patients revealed that male gender (11, 12, 25, 36, 48), age older than 35 years(12), being single, divorced or widowed(12, 13), being unemployed (13), being black American (36), colored ethnicity (48), low level of education (12, 48), no educational background (11), low level of income (<70US$ per month) (12) and poverty (48). Besides, being on category-II tuberculosis treatment(relapse and treatment failure)(12), TB retreatment patient status and non-adherence to anti-TB medication(48), patients with chronic/relapsing form of tuberculosis (37), patients with perceived TB stigma(11), patients who feel ashamed of having TB(11), people close to you would avoid you because of TB(11), HIV-co-infection and low HIV CD4-count(11), having cavitary lesions on chest radiographic examination(36), and smear-positive and culture-positive types of TB(36) were also the reported clinical and tuberculosis related factors for AUD (Table 4).