Systematic analysis of infectious disease outcomes by age

Dataset made available to support a paper titled "Systematic analysis of infectious disease outcomes by age shows lowest severity in school-age children". Information on infections was found in different ways. PubMed was used to find reports on specific infections, searching with “case fatality” or “severity” or “hospital*”and “age”, or looking at reports of large outbreaks. Outbreak reports were also searched through the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) produced by the US Centers for Disease Control. To find suitable studies in the older literature, the journal Public Health was hand-searched from volume 1 (1888) to volume 59 (1946), the Public Health Bulletin from 1904-1949 and the issues of the Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene available on-line (1915-19, 1921, 1923). All pamphlets and reports in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine library open shelves and books in the Wellcome collection library open shelves relating to infectious diseases were hand-searched. These include reports from the 19th century onwards. We also searched books and reports available electronically from the United States Public Health Service, US National Library of Medicine Digital Collections, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, or Google on plague, cholera and yellow fever. The authors’ literature collection was searched, and relevant references followed (snowball searching). All identified studies that gave information on the age-pattern of severity were included if they satisfied the following criteria: [1] Included children and adults, [2] Data stratified in 10-year age groups or less, [3] At least 100 cases included, [4] Source of data given.

Keywords

Infectious diseases, Age groups, Severity, Case fatality ratio estimates, Systematic review, Search strategy