Seroprevalence of hepatitis B and C in Nepal: a systematic review (1973–2017)

Table 2 Findings of the meta-analyses for hepatitis C virus (HCV) prevalence measures

Populations at risk	Studies	Samples	HCV prevalence estimates		Heterogeneity measures
Populations at risk	Total N	Total N	Mean (%)	95% CI	Q (p-value)^a	τ ^2b	I² (confidence limits-%)^c	Prediction interval (%)^d
People who inject drugs	15	3140	45.17	26.34–64.73	1714.1 (< 0.0001)	0.1487	99.2 (99.0–99.3)	0–100
Populations at intermediate risk	12	4998	12.76	5.44–22.47	668.83 (< 0.0001)	0.0486	98.4 (97.9–98.7)	0–59.58
Populations at low risk (general population)	28	972,123	0.68	0.54–0.86	683.44 (< 0.0001)	0.2027	96.0 (95.1–96.8)	0.26–1.75
Populations with liver-related conditions	6	411	11.51	7.73–15.87	7.40 (0.1926)	0.0018	32.4 (0–72.7)	3.48–22.89
Special clinical populations	3	133	1.67	0–5.81	2.79 (0.2473)	0.0022	28.4 (0–92.6)	0–75.38

^aQ: the Cochran’s Q statistic is a measure assessing the existence of heterogeneity in HCV prevalence estimates
^bτ²: the estimated between-study variance in the double arcsine transformed proportions of the true HCV prevalence estimates. The back-transformed τ² was not calculated as the methodology to do so is not currently available
^cI²: a measure assessing the magnitude of between-study variation that is due to differences in HCV prevalence estimates across studies rather than chance
^dPrediction interval: estimates the 95% interval in which the true HCV prevalence in a new HCV study will lie

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