Parechovirus A infection and risk of gastroenteritis in children: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

Parechovirus A (PeV-A) belongs to the genus Parechovirus in the family Picornaviridae associated with gastroenteritis illness, particularly in children, but prior studies have produced ambiguous results. This study aimed to provide a systematic review of the PeV-A prevalence in paediatric patients with gastroenteritis and the association between PeV-A infection and the risk of gastroenteritis. A systematic search of the literature was conducted in Embase, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, in combination with the reference lists of potentially relevant articles. A random effect-based model was applied to analyse data from included studies. The pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were used for assessing the risk between PeV-A and gastroenteritis. A total of 41 studies assessing 21,850 cases and 1746 healthy controls were analysed. The overall prevalence of PeV-A among paediatric patients with gastroenteritis was 10.4% (95% CI: 7.9%-13.2%), while it was estimated at 8.1% (95% CI: 5.1%-11.7%) based on studies only investigating children without gastroenteritis. The pooled OR for all eight case-control studies was 1.079 (95% CI: 0.730-1.597), indicating there was no statistically significant association. PeV-A genotype 1 was the most frequent genotype of PeV-A infection in children with gastroenteritis. The PeV-A prevalence in cases of gastroenteritis is higher than that in children without gastroenteritis. However, the present meta-analysis did not indicate a statistically significant association between PeV-A infection and risk of gastroenteritis. Given the considerable heterogeneity and various sample sizes among the included studies, relevant investigations in the future should be carried out based on a large-scale population.