Language bias assessment
To compare the synthesized HSV-2 prevalence between the studies
published in Chinese and English bibliographic databases, we stratified
the study population into the general, intermediate-risk, and
higher-risk populations. We used the meta-regression to assess the
association between HSV-2 seroprevalence and language of the
bibliography systems using relative risk as the measure. We hypothesize
there would be a difference in HSV-2 seroprevalence estimation between
the studies identified from Chinese and English bibliographic databases
suggesting the existence of publication bias.25
“Publication” refers to a document reporting any outcome measure,
while a “study” refers to details of a specific outcome measure. One
publication might contain multiple study outcome measures (e.g.,
subgroup analyses). Duplicate or overlapping studies were included only
once.
Literature screening was completed by Covidence.26Publication management was completed by Endnote X9.27Data extraction was completed by Microsoft Office Excel 2016.
Meta-analyses, meta-regression, and mapping were conducted in R, version
4.3.0, using the ‘meta’ and ‘metafor’ packages.28,29