The prevalence of tuberculosis, malaria and soil-transmitted helminth infection in minority indigenous people of Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), malaria and soil-transmitted helminthiasis continue to impose a significant global health burden and socio-economic impact. Globally, minority indigenous people are disproportionately affected by poverty and are shown to experience a disparate burden of disease and poorer health outcomes than the comparative majority population. Despite these inequalities, countries rarely systematically compile epidemiological data disaggregated by ethnicity to enable the extent of the differential to be quantified. Methods The systematic review will be reported in accordance with The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta- Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Systematic searches will be conducted in EMBASE, Medline, Scopus and Web of Science for studies reporting data which enable the prevalence of TB, malaria, and/or soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections amongst minority indigenous populations within the Southeast Asia Region (SEAR) and Western Pacific Region (WPR) to be calculated. Where studies provide data on disease prevalence for both minority indigenous and other populations within the same study, a comparative analysis will be undertaken. In addition to a narrative synthesis, where sufficient data are available, a random-effects meta-analysis will be conducted to obtain a pooled estimate value for each disease/infection by country and mortality stratum. Heterogeneity between studies will be examined using the Cochran’s Q test and quantitatively measured by the index of heterogeneity squared (I2) statistics. The methodological quality of the included studies will be assessed using a modified Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Discussion This systematic review aims to analyse the available data on the prevalence of TB, malaria and STH infections within minority indigenous populations of the SEAR and WPR. Registration Open Science Framework registration: osf.io/m6sqc

Clinical laboratory parameters and fatality of Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Two authors (Y.W and X.Y.X) each separately evaluated the quality of each included study using a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale (NOS) [ 10 ], and A third investigator (H.L.W) was consulted when disagreements arose. The NOS tool has scores ranging from 0 to 9.…”

The prevalence of soil transmitted helminth infections in minority indigenous populations of South-East Asia and the Western Pacific Region: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Specifics on the search criteria and details of the study selection criteria are available in a published protocol. [ 22 ]…”

“…In accordance with the protocol,[ 22 ] minority indigenous populations were defined when each of the following criteria were met:…”

“…Following pilot testing and refinement, a data extraction spreadsheet was used to record the following information: first author and year of publication; year and country in which the study was undertaken; study population classification (minority indigenous or other); species of infectious agent; diagnostic method; sex of study participants; size (n) of the study population and number of disease positive participants. Although the protocol [ 22 ] also intended to extract and analyze data by age, this was not undertaken due to the large variation in age classifications across publications.…”

“…A modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment (QA) Scale[ 25 ] was utilized to assess the quality of the studies analysed, the scores for which are detailed in S2 Table . The QA tool has scores ranging from 0 to 9, in accordance with the protocol,[ 22 ] scores between 1 and 4 were defined as low quality, scores between 5 and 7 were defined as medium quality, and scores between 8 and 9 defined as high quality.…”