Relapse following treatment of drug dependence in the gulf cooperation council countries : a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract EN

Introduction: Globally, substance misuse remains a public health priority for many countries.

Substance misuse is a chronic health problem with a high risk of relapse along its course.

Few studies have investigated relapse as relates to substance misuse in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries following treatment.

In the current meta-analysis, we aimed to determine the pooled relapse rate among individuals who use substances in the GCC countries.

Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, ArabPsyFound, and ArabPsyNet from inception to end of December 2018.

The obtained articles were systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed.

The statistical analyses followed the binary random-effects model for meta-analysis.

Results: The systematic review and meta-analysis included nine (K=9) original research studies and involved a total of 12819 respondents in four of the six GCC countries.

Six studies (K= 6, N= 3138) had both a sample size and a relapsed number of cases to enter the meta-analysis of pooled relapse rate.

Meta-analytic pooling of the point estimates of relapse rate yielded a result of 55.8% (95% CI 33.4% - 78.2%, P<0.001), with statistically significant evidence of between-study heterogeneity (Q=760.717, τ2=0.078, I 2=99, P<0.001).

Conclusion: Findings from the current systematic review and meta-analysisshow that about 56% of individuals who uses substances will relapse following treatment in the GCC countries.