“…All the non-randomized controlled trials except two studies [one case-control (Busetto et al, 2005) and one cross-sectional (Lage-Hansen et al, 2018)] were observational (i.e., 26 studies). Out of these 26 observational studies, 19 were prospective (Pillar et al, 1994;Valencia-Flores et al, 2004;Pallayova et al, 2011;Krieger et al, 2012;Bakker et al, 2013Bakker et al, , 2014Fredheim et al, 2013;Bae et al, 2014;Karaköse et al, 2014;Zou et al, 2015;Del Genio et al, 2016;Jiao et al, 2016;Shaarawy et al, 2016;Xu et al, 2016;Peromaa-Haavisto et al, 2017;Tirado et al, 2017;Al-Jumaily et al, 2018;Chierakul et al, 2020;Yilmaz Kara et al, 2021) and 7 retrospective (Peiser et al, 1984;Fritscher et al, 2007;Morong et al, 2014;Obeidat et al, 2020;Song et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2022;Yanari et al, 2022) in study design. Figure 1, the PRISMA flow diagram, demonstrates the flow of records from the initial search through the selection process, the number of records included, and the reasons for exclusion.…”