“…The characteristics of the studies, including author, publication year, country, age of participants, gender, followup period, number of participants, exposure details, assessment of outcome, and NOS quality scores, are summarized in Table 1. Of the 18 observational studies, four involved women only (19,22,31,36), one study involved men only (32), and 13 involved both men and women (20,21,(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)33,(38)(39)(40)(41)(42). Furthermore, 11 studies used a cohort study design (19,20,22,23,26,(31)(32)(33)36,38,42), five used a case-control study design (16,21,24,39,41), and two used a nested case-control study (25,27).…”