Abstract: Objective To systematically investigate relationship between the urinary tract infections and PBC from the perspective of evidence-based medicine. Methods PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wangfang Database and VIP database were searched to for observational studies on association between association between the urinary tract infections and PBC. And then a meta-analysis was performed by using Review manager 5.3 software. Results A total of 7 studies involving 4197 cases of PBC group and 21237 cases of control group. There were 1538 patients with urinary tract infection in PBC group and 4197 patients in control group. A random effect model was used for overall analysis based on heterogeneity. The results showed that the incidence of urinary tract infections in the PBC group is higher compared with the control group (OR=1.50, 95% CI: 1.26 to 1.77, P<0.00001). By subgroup analysis by region, PBC group had significant increasing risk of UTIs compared to the control group in both North America (OR:1.34, 95% CI: 1.23 to 1.46, P<0.00001) and European (OR:1.79, 95% CI: 1.37 to 2.33, P<0.0001). Conclusion The risk of UTIs is higher in the PBC group than the control group. However, more rigorous clinical studies need to be designed to prove the causal relationship.

Key words: Primary biliary cholangitis, Urinary tract infections, Meta-analysis