Religiosity and spirituality for the outcome of anxiety in chronic kidney patients: systematic review and meta-analysis

There is a large proportion of people with chronic diseases, such as kidney disease, and this fact has been associated with levels of anxiety to a considerable extent. Spirituality and religiosity are aspects little discussed within the health area, but they can have an important influence on the quality of life and mental well-being of various populations. There is a discussion about the relationship between religious and spiritual practice with clinical health outcomes. Therefore, the objective of the study was to analyze the impact of religiosity and spirituality for the anxiety outcome in chronic kidney patients. It is a systematic review with meta-analysis guided by the PRISMA protocol. Studies were sought from the sources PUBMED, Scopus, MEDLINE, LILACS and Web of Science. The following search strategy was used: “(Religiosity OR spirituality) AND anxiety AND (Chronic Kidney Disease OR hemodialysis)”. Inclusion criteria were considered to be available at least the abstract, with any methodological design, published between the years 2015 to 2020. Repeated studies, other literature reviews and studies with a high risk of bias analyzed by the Downs and Black tool were excluded. Initially, 664 studies were found, of which 10 were selected for final analysis. There was a high impact of the presence of religiosity and spirituality to improve the final outcome of anxiety with secondary analysis of quality of life with ES 0.75 CI (0.66 - 0.82). There was a positive correlation between the presence of the analyzed aspects and decreased levels of anxiety with a value of 0.77 CI (0.68 - 0.85) and p-value <0.05.