The presence of Legionella pneumophila (LP) in aquatic habitat is a global concern. The current study was undertaken to estimate the prevalence of LP in water systems with the aid of a systematic review and meta-analysis. The searching was performed among some international databases, including Scopus, PubMed, and Embase to retrieve the related articles between 1/January/1983 and 25/July/ 2017. Therefore, thirty-six articles (with 43 studies) out of 1,541 articles collected, were included in

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... meta-analysis. The overall prevalence of LP in water systems was determined as 20% (95%CI: 15-25). Also, the lowest and highest pooled prevalence of LP was observed in Poland (4% (95%CI: 0-13%)) and Kuwait (98% (95%CI: 90-100%)), respectively. The lowest and highest prevalence of LPbased on water resources subgroups was a water reservoir (15% (95%CI: 2-37%) and well (40% (95%CI: 26-50%), respectively. The number of studies that used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for detection of LP was 16/43 (37.3%) while the culture method was 27/43 (62.7%). Generally speaking, the relatively high prevalence of LP among the investigated water systems was demonstrated, which should be reduced by performing appropriate control actions.