Time-trends for eczema prevalences among children and adults from 1985 to 2015 in China: A

Liu et al. BMC Public Health (2022) 22:1294

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13650-7

RESEARCH

Time-trends for eczema prevalences

among children and adults from 1985 to 2015

in China: a systematic review

Wei Liu1

, Jiao Cai1

, Chanjuan Sun2

, Zhijun Zou2

, Jialing Zhang2 and Chen Huang2*

Abstract

Background: Several studies have reported that childhood prevalence of eczema has been increasing worldwide.

However, none study quantitatively evaluated prevalence trends of eczema among children and adults in the last 30

years in China.

Methods and Findings: Via a systematic review of literature databases in English and Chinese, we summarized all

studies reporting eczema prevalences from 1985 to 2015 in China as well as diagramed prevalence and eczematous

population trends against year for diferent age groups. A total of 93 studies and 17 studies (16 for children and one

for adults) were selected for qualitative and quantitative synthesis, respectively. Childhood lifetime-ever eczema prev￾alences ranged from 10.0% to 30.0%. Prevalences among 3-12-year-olds children showed increasing trends in most

specifc cities, but national lifetime-ever eczema prevalences among 13-14-year-olds children decreased from 10.6%

in 2001 to 8.6% in 2009 in mainland China. We estimated that about 1.5 million children aged 13-14-year-olds in 2009

and 15.5 million children aged 3-6-year-olds in 2012 had lifetime-ever eczema in mainland China. Similar studies were

too few to ascertain time-trends of eczema prevalence among adults. About 39.4, 20.0, and 11.6 million adults aged

15-86-year-olds in 2010 had contact dermatitis, seborrheic dermatitis, and atopic dermatitis in the mainland China,

respectively.

Conclusions: The burden of eczema became heavier in young children, whereas perhaps had been reduced in ado￾lescent in China. More studies for eczema prevalence in adults are warranted.

Keywords: Eczema, China, Time-trend, Prevalence, Eczematous population

© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which

permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the

original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or

other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line

to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory

regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this

licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco

mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Introduction

Eczema, also known as dermatitis, is a common skin

disease among children and adults [1]. Several studies

worldwide have reported childhood and adult preva￾lences of eczema and their time-trends in the recent

years [2–4]. Te International Study of Asthma and

Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) reported that in the

seven years between Phase One during 1995 and Phase

Tree during 2002-2003, eczema prevalences in most

centers with low prevalence in 1995 had substantially

increased, but had mostly leveled or decreased in the

1995 high prevalence countries [2, 3]. Te increases in

eczema prevalences were more common in the 6-7 than

in the 13-14-year-olds age-group [2, 3]. A systematic

review of epidemiological studies concluded that child￾hood prevalence of eczema increased between 1990 and

2010 in Eastern Asia, Western Europe, parts of Northern

Europe, and Africa, but no clear trends were identifed in

other regions; and there were inadequate data for eczema

worldwide [4].

Open Access

*Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected]

2

School of Environment and Architecture, University of Shanghai for Science

and Technology, 516 Jungong Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai, PR China

Full list of author information is available at the end of the article