Systematic review and meta-analysis evaluates asthma cases attributable to housing mold, highlighting the substantial public health burden of damp indoor environments.
Background: Asthma is one of the most common non-communicable diseases in the world. In Brazil, from 2017 to 2019, it was responsible for approximately 260 thousand hospitalizations, with R$ 149.3 million as direct costs and more than 817 thousand days of hospitalizations. Residential mold is an associated risk factor. Objective: Calculate cases of asthma attributable to the exposure to residential mold in Brazil. Methods: A meta-analysis was performed with studies from 2014 to 2019 selected by a systematic review in the Web Of Science and United States National Library of Medicine (PubMed) databases following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Residential mold is the exposure factor and asthma the outcome of interest. Quality analysis and publication bias followed the protocols of the Joanna Briggs Institute. Results: An association between residential mold and asthma was identified with a single odds ratio of 1.525 and a 95% confidence interval between 1.385 and 1.679. The fraction of asthma cases in Brazil attributable to exposure to residential mold was estimated to be 16.76%, which may result in 13,383 cases and 42,904 days of hospitalizations in 2019 in the public and complementary networks of the Brazilian health system. Conclusions: The study suggests that the mitigation of this risk factor could lead to a lower incidence of this outcome.
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