Table 1.

Characteristics of the studies included in the meta-analysis

Study	Region	Study period	Number of subjects	Male (%)	Newcastle-Ottawa scale
					Selection	Comparability	Outcome
Calle et al. [24] (2003)	USA	1982–1988	900,053	45.0	****	*	***
Batty et al. [25] (2005)	UK	1967–2002	18,403	100.0	***	*	**
Kuriyama et al. [26] (2005)	Japan	1984–1992	27,539	45.3	***	*	**
Rapp et al. [27] (2005)	Austria	1985–2002	145,931	46.2	***	*	**
N’Kontchou et al. [28] (2006)	France	1994–2004	771	64.3	****	**	*
Jee et al. [29] (2008)	Korea	1992–2006	1,213,829	63.5	***	*	*
Joshi et al. [30] (2008)	Korea	1998–2004	548,530	100.0	***	**	**
Inoue et al. [31] (2009)	Japan	1993–2006	17,590	34.6	****	**	**
Wang et al. [32] (2009)	Taiwan	1997–2004	5,929	43.5	***	**	**
Hart et al. [33] (2010)	Scotland	1965–2007	26,738	61.8	****	*	***
Chao et al. [34] (2011)	Taiwan	1989–2006	1,142	100.0	****	**	***
Hung et al. [35] (2011)	Taiwan	1999–2009	1,470	52.1	****	**	***
Borena et al. [36] (2012)	Europe	1972–2006	578,700	50.1	****	*	***
Chen et al. [37] (2013)	Taiwan	2004–2007	56,231	30.9	****	**	**
Li et al. [38] (2013)	Japan	1988–2009	72,473	42.8	****	*	***
Loomba et al. [39] (2013)	Taiwan	1991–2004	23,712	50.3	****	**	***
Song et al. [40] (2014)	Europe	1972–2008	54,725	48.7	****	*	***
Meyer et al. [41] (2015)	Europe	1977–2008	35,784	47.2	****	*	**
Campbell et al. [42] (2016)	USA	1980–2011	1,570,023	40.8	***	*	**
Liu et al. [43] (2016)	China	1996–2013	68,253	0.0	****	*	**
Setiawan et al. [44] (2016)	USA	1993–2010	168,476	46.3	****	*	***
McMahon et al. [45] (2017)	USA	1995–2012	1,080	49.3	****	**	**
Nderitu et al. [46] (2017)	Sweden	1985–2011	65,224	57.2	****	*	**
Yang et al. [47] (2017)	USA	1995–2011	297,928	58.5	***	*	**
Brichler et al. [48] (2019)	France	2006–2012	317	82.3	****	**	**
Hagström et al. [49] (2018)	Sweden	1969–2012	1,220,261	100.0	****	*	**
Jeong et al. [50] (2018)	Korea	2002–2013	510,148	54.3	****	*	***
Yi et al. [51] (2018)	Korea	2002–2013	504,646	54.3	****	**	**