Prevalence of Headache in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of 14,275 Patients

<jats:p><jats:bold>Background:</jats:bold> Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) started to spread globally since December 2019 from Wuhan, China. Headache has been observed as one of the clinical manifestations in COVID-19 patients. We aimed to conduct a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the overall pooled prevalence of headache in COVID-19 patients.</jats:p><jats:p><jats:bold>Methods:</jats:bold> PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar databases were searched to identify studies published between December 2019 and March 2020. Adult (≥18 years) COVID-19 patients were considered eligible. We used random-effects model to estimate the pooled prevalence with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Quality assessment was done using the Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tools. This study is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020182529).</jats:p><jats:p><jats:bold>Results:</jats:bold> We identified 2,055 studies, of which 86 studies (<jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = 14,275, 49.4% female) were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, the pooled prevalence of headache in COVID-19 patients was 10.1% [95% CI: 8.76–11.49]. There was no significant difference of headache prevalence in severe or critical vs. non-severe (RR: 1.05, <jats:italic>p</jats:italic> = 0.78), survived (recovered or discharged) vs. non-survived (RR: 1.36, <jats:italic>p</jats:italic> = 0.23), and ICU vs. non-ICU (RR: 1.06, <jats:italic>p</jats:italic> = 0.87) COVID-19 patients. We detected 64.0, 34.9, and 1.1% of the included studies as high, moderate, and low quality, respectively.</jats:p><jats:p><jats:bold>Conclusions:</jats:bold> From the first 4-month data of the outbreak, headache was detected in 10.1% of the adult COVID-19 patients.</jats:p>