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Background: Flavivirus diseases such as dengue fever (DENV), West Nile virus (WNV), Zika and yellow fever represent a substantial global public health concern. Preexisting chronic conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, and asthma were thought to predict risk of progression to severe infections. We aimed to quantify the prevalence of comorbidities in flavivirus diseases and to evaluate the relationship between these conditions and the severity of clinical viral expression.

Methods & Materials: We conducted a comprehensive search in PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE (R), Embase and Embase Classic and grey literature databases to identify studies reporting prevalence estimates of comorbidities in flavivirus diseases. Study quality was assessed with the risk of bias tool. Subgroup analyses were undertaken to evaluate the prevalence estimates in different world regions.

Results: We identified 65 …