Armaghane Danesh Bimonthly Journal (Sep 2023)
Prevalence of Clinical Symptoms of COVID-19 in Pediatrics: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Abstract
Background & aim: COVID-19 has numerous and diverse clinical symptoms in different groups, which highlights the identification of common symptoms in children as silent carriers and the timely identification of patients to control the spread of this disease. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to determine and investigate the prevalence of clinical symptoms of COVID-19-19 in children. Methods: The present review and meta-analysis study was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. The prevalence of symptoms as identification factors of children with COVID-19 at the time of arrival to the hospital between January 2020 and April 2022 was investigated. Articles used in international and domestic databases using the keywords "children", "children", "Covid-19", "symptoms", "clinical symptoms", "fever", "diarrhea", "vomiting" ", "shortness of breath", "cough", "headache", "nausea", "shivering", "body pain", "fatigue" and "malaise" were searched. The collected data were evaluated using the Egger test to check the diffusion error and heterogeneity using the I2 test. Results: In order to determine the prevalence of symptoms of covid-19 in children, a total of 261 articles were received, and finally 21 articles were considered in the analysis. In general, 2200 patients were examined in the present study. According to the results, fever with an overall prevalence of 47% and a confidence interval of 95% (38.96-50.50) is the highest symptom and diarrhea with an overall prevalence of 6.69% and a confidence interval (5.42-8.05) is the lowest. Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, fever and cough were two prominent symptoms of the covid-19 disease in children, and considering that these two symptoms are common symptoms in most children's diseases, during the current epidemic, it is necessary to identify sick children or be considered contaminated.
