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Review
. 2023 Oct 7;10(10):1662.
doi: 10.3390/children10101662.

Seroprevalence of Dengue and Chikungunya Virus Infections in Children Living in Sub-Saharan Africa: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neema Kayange  1 , Duncan K Hau  2 , Kevin Pain  3 , Stephen E Mshana  4 , Robert Peck  1   2   5 , Stephan Gehring  6 , Britta Groendahl  6 , Philip Koliopoulos  6 , Baraka Revocatus  7 , Evarist B Msaki  8 , Ombeva Malande  9   10   11   12
Affiliations
Review

Seroprevalence of Dengue and Chikungunya Virus Infections in Children Living in Sub-Saharan Africa: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neema Kayange et al. Children (Basel). .

Abstract

Dengue and chikungunya viruses are frequent causes of malarial-like febrile illness in children. The rapid increase in virus transmission by mosquitoes is a global health concern. This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis of the childhood prevalence of dengue and chikungunya in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A comprehensive search of the MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), and Cochrane Library (Wiley) databases was conducted on 28 June 2019, and updated on 12 February 2022. The search strategy was designed to retrieve all articles pertaining to arboviruses in SSA children using both controlled vocabulary and keywords. The pooled (weighted) proportion of dengue and chikungunya was estimated using a random effect model. The overall pooled prevalence of dengue and chikungunya in SSA children was estimated to be 16% and 7%, respectively. Prevalence was slightly lower during the period 2010-2020 compared to 2000-2009. The study design varied depending on the healthcare facility reporting the disease outbreak. Importantly, laboratory methods used to detect arbovirus infections differed. The present review documents the prevalence of dengue and chikungunya in pediatric patients throughout SSA. The results provide unprecedented insight into the transmission of dengue and chikungunya viruses among these children and highlight the need for enhanced surveillance and controlled methodology.

Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa; chikungunya virus; dengue virus; prevalence; systematic review.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no relationship, financial or otherwise relevant to this article, to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prisma flow diagram of systematic reviews that included searches of databases and registers only.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Map showing areas of DENV infection in children living in SSA.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Estimated meta-analysis of the prevalence of DENV in febrile children living in SSA. Midpoint of each horizontal line segments represents the proportional of prevalence of dengue for each study while the rhombic mark shows the pooled proportions for all studies [20,22,23,24,25,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,54,55,57,58,59,60,61,63,64,65,66].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Prevalence of DENV infections in children by SSA country.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Areas of CHIKV infection in children living in SSA.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Estimated meta-analysis of the prevalence of CHIKV infections in febrile children living in SSA. Midpoint of each horizontal line segments represents the proportional of prevalence of Chikungunya for each study while the rhombic mark shows the pooled proportions for all studies [20,21,22,26,27,28,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,41,45,49,52,53,56,62,63,66].
Figure 7
Figure 7
Prevalence of CHIKV infections in children by country in SSA.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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