Authors' response

摘要

We would like to thank Dr Papageorgiou for his interest in our article. We are grateful for the opportunity to offer a few clarifications. While conducting and reporting this meta-analysis, we strictly followed the MOOSE statement, which was released in 2000 and is probably the only guideline for meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology.Compared with meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses concerning prevalence (MCPs) are relatively new and rare in the literature. Variations in methodology are common. First, many authors of MCPs based their choice of summary methodology on the significance of heterogeneity, and we referred to them.