Meta-Analysis Results on Early-Life Mercury Exposure and Childhood Allergic Diseases

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 16 observational studies on mercury exposure and allergic outcomes in children, conducted by Qiming Liang and published in April 2026. The analysis reports pooled prevalence estimates for asthma, atopic dermatitis, eczema, allergic rhinitis, and wheezing, noting high heterogeneity and regional differences between East Asian and European cohorts.

Use Cases

• Estimating the prevalence of asthma among mercury-exposed children based on the pooled result of 6.2%.
• Comparing regional effects on allergic disease proportions based on findings from East Asian and European cohorts.
• Analyzing the association between prenatal or postnatal mercury exposure and atopic dermatitis based on the reported 18.6% prevalence.
• Investigating heterogeneity in study outcomes based on the reported I² > 90%.
• Assessing the relationship between mercury exposure timing and allergic rhinitis based on the reported 15.8% prevalence.

Strengths

• Provides specific pooled prevalence estimates with confidence intervals for five allergic outcomes.
• Includes 16 studies sourced from PubMed and Embase, offering a structured review.
• Identifies regional differences in outcomes between East Asian and European cohorts.

Limitations

• The dataset is a 26.9 KB DOCX file, likely containing only summary text and not raw data.
• Column-level documentation and sample data are unavailable, limiting detailed analysis.
• High heterogeneity (I² > 90%) suggests considerable variability in the underlying study results.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies.

Time Range

Studies searched from inception to October 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-09 05:14:59.

Geography

Studies include cohorts from East Asia and Europe.