Enteric Salmonella in humans and food in the Middle East and North Africa: protocol of a systematic review

Introduction Non-typhoidal Salmonella is considered one of the leading causes of foodborne disease worldwide. This protocol provides methods that will be used to synthesise available epidemiological data on non-typhoidal enteric Salmonella in humans and food in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and to characterise the morbidity of human salmonellosis in this region. Methods and analysis A systematic review will be conducted based on the Cochrane Collaboration handbook and will be reported following the items outlined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. We will search PubMed, Embase, CAB Direct and Global Health Library (WHO) databases in order to identify relevant reports. Additionally, the literature search will be supplemented by checking references of the included reports and the identified reviews. Furthermore, we will hand-search conference proceedings and Ministry of Health's website of each country of the MENA region. We will use comprehensive search criteria with no time and no language restrictions. We will extract data on report and study characteristics, biological assay characteristics, individuals' demographic characteristics and on primary and secondary outcomes of interest. If appropriate, meta-analysis will be conducted in order to estimate pooled prevalence measures using DerSimonian and Laird random-effects models. We will conduct meta-regression analysis to explore the effect of study-level characteristics as potential sources of heterogeneity. Ethics and dissemination The results of the systematic review will be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at relevant conferences.