Abstract: Objective: To investigate the epidemiological aspect of tuberculosis (TB) infection  among the patients with erythema nodosum (EN) from 1993 to 2018 in China. Methods: The relevant studies were searched from PubMed, Embase, MEDLINE, CNKI, CBM and Wanfang databases from January 1993 to September 2018 and analyzed with Meta-analysis through STATA 12.0. Results: A total of 27 articles were included in the final analysis, including 11 domestic literatures (1019 EN patients) and 16 foreign literatures (995 patients). Out of 1019 Chinese patients, 277 EN patients had TB infection (25.4%) and out of 995 foreign patients, 52 patients had TB infection (6%).  Subgroup analysis showed that the prevalence of TB in the patients with EN in the eastern, central and western regions of China were 16.0%, 27.9%, and 32.5%, respectively. Meta-regression showed regional factors (P=0.02) rather than year factors explained the source of heterogeneity. In the studies in which more detail information was presented, the distribution of tuberculous foci, the proportion of tuberculosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, lymphatic tuberculosis, other types such as tuberculous pleurisy, ovarian tuberculosis, and only with strong positive PPD were 44.4%, 11.1%, 7.1%, and 38.2%, respectively. Conclusion: Since most EN patients do not have significant clinical symptoms (signs), more efforts should be made to search for the potential infections of tuberculosis.

Key words: tuberculosis, erythema nodosum