Article Text
Abstract
Background The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest worldwide health challenge in this century. Research concerning the role of children in the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and investigating the clinical effects of infection in children, has been vital. This paper describes the publication trend for pertinent scientific literature relating to COVID-19 in children during the first 6 months of the pandemic.
Methods A comprehensive search of preprint and published literature was conducted daily across four databases (PubMed, Scopus, Ovid-Embase and MedRXiv) between 1 January 2020 and 30 June 2020. Titles and abstracts were screened against predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Findings Over the study period, a total of 45 453 papers were retrieved, of which 476 met our inclusion criteria. The cumulative number of children described in included publications totalled (at most) 41 396. The median number of children per paper was 6 (IQR 1–33). Nearly one-third of papers (30.2%) reported on a single child, and a further 28.3% reported on between 1 and 9 children. Half of all the publications originated from Asia.
Interpretation Our prospective bibliographic analysis of paediatric COVID-19 publications demonstrated a steady increase in the number of papers over time. Understanding and policy evolved with new information that was gathered over the course of the study period. However, over half of publications were individual case reports or small case series, which may have had a limited contribution to advancement of knowledge. During a pandemic, literature should be interpreted with great caution, and clinical/policy decisions should be continually reviewed in light of emerging evidence.
- COVID-19
- data collection
- epidemiology
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Footnotes
PAS and APSM are joint first authors.
Twitter @RachelHarwood10, @damian_roland
Contributors PAS contributed to the conception and design, interpretation of data, drafted the initial draft, revised the draft and approved the final version to be published. AM contributed to the conception and design, acquisition and interpretation of data, revised the draft and approved the final version to be published. PAS and AM contributed equally as joint first authors. EB contributed to the design, analyses/interpretation of data, revised the draft and approved of the final version to be published. NTDC contributed to the conception and design, acquisition and analyses of data, revised the draft and approved of the final version to be published. RH contributed to the design, revised the draft and approved of the final version to be published. DR contributed to the conception and design, interpretation of data, revised the draft and approved of the final version to be published.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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