Objective To explore influencing factors of chronic diseases in Chinese adults and to provide references for prevention and control of chronic diseases.

Methods We searched Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (NKI), Wanfang Database, and Chinese Sci-Tech Periodical Full-Text Database (VIP) to collect literatures published from January 2005 to September 2017 on influencing factors of chronic diseases in Chinese residents aged 18 years and above. RevMan 5.3 and Stata 12 software were used to perform a meta-analysis.

Results We included 21 literatures in the analysis, which involved totally 84 140 residents in 21 municipalities of 14 provinces or regions across China. Among all the participants of the study, 36 432 were identified suffering from chronic diseases, with an overall prevalence rate of 43.30%. The meta-analysis revealed following promoting factors of chronic diseases: female gender (vs. male: pooled odds ratio OR = 1.29, 95% confidence interval 95% CI:1.23 – 1.36), aged ≥ 45 years (vs. < 45 years: OR = 4.96, 95% CI: 4.47 – 5.50), smoking (vs. not smoking: OR = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.52 – 1.71), drinking alcohol (vs. not drinking alcohol: OR = 1.12, 95% CI: 1.05 – 1.20), overweight/obesity (vs. normal body weight: OR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.75 – 2.03), and with preference for salty food (vs. without the preference: OR = 1.50, 95% CI: 1.38 – 1.64) among the participants; the analysis results also demonstrated that with the education of senior high school and above (vs. junior high school and below: OR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.63 – 0.76), married (vs. unmarried: OR = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.40 – 0.56), with average monthly income of ≥ 2 000 RMB yuan (vs. < 2 000 yuan: OR = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.66 – 0.74), doing physical exercise (vs. not doing exercise: OR = 0.64, 95% CI: 0.52 – 0.78), and having sleeping time of ≥ 8 hours or more per day (vs. < 8 hours: OR = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.40 – 0.67) were protective factors against chronic disease. Sensitivity analysis and publication bias assessment results did not indicated publication bias of the included studies.

Conclusion Gender, age, education level, marital status, average monthly income, smoking, alcohol drinking, body mass index, preference for salty food, doing physical exercise, and sleeping time are main influencing factors of chronic diseases in Chinese adult residents.