Introduction:
The aim of the present study was to explore the correlation between cough variant asthma (CVA) and repeated episodes of mycoplasma pneumonia in children.

Material and methods:
Multiple databases were searched for relevant studies, and the articles that eventually satisfied the inclusion criteria were included. All the meta-analyses were conducted with Review Manager 5.2. To estimate the quality of each article, the risk of bias table was used. In total, 1223 patients with CVA and 1437 patients with simple cough (SC) were included.

Results:
Finally, 9 studies including 2660 patients were included, who eventually satisfied the eligibility criteria. The results of the heterogeneity test suggested that the serum level of IgE (MD = 80.69, 95% CI: 77.75–83.62, p < 0.001; p for heterogeneity < 0.001, I² = 95%), eosinophil count (MD = 2.93, 95% CI: 2.72–3.13, p < 0.001; p for heterogeneity < 0.001, I² = 71%) and the number of children with positive IgM (OR = 4.44, 95% CI: 3.73–5.29, p < 0.001; p for heterogeneity = 0.63, I² = 0%) were significantly different. The value of IgE in CVA was higher than that in SC, eosinophil count in CVA was higher than that in SC and the number of IgM positive children in the CVA group was higher than that in the SC group.

Conclusions:
This study demonstrated a correlation between cough variant asthma and mycoplasma pneumonia.