Abstract:Objective To systematically evaluate the clinical characteristics of Streptococcus gallolyticus (SG) infection in children. Methods PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, and VIP databases were systematically retrieved, retrieval time was from database establishment to March 15, 2024. Case reports or case series reports of SG infection in children were included, while reviews, abstracts that couldn’t obtain the full text, and literatures outside of Chinese and English language were excluded. Two researchers independently evaluated the quality of the included literatures, extracted literature information, and summarized the clinical characteristics of SG infection by adopting Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) quality evaluation tools. Results 35 literatures were included in analysis, involving 65 pediatric patients, including 40 males and 22 females, with 3 cases not reporting gender. The age of onset ranges from 20 hours to 3.5 years old. Bacteremia, bacterial meningitis, infective endocarditis, urinary tract infection, and liver abscess were 53, 38, 4, 2 cases, and 1 case, respectively. SG had a high susceptibility rate to penicillin (96.1%). Bacteremia and meningitis were often treated with monotherapy of penicillin G, ampicillin, or cefotaxime, with a few cases using two antimicrobial combination. Four cases of endocarditis were all treated with two antimicrobial combination, and one case of liver abscess was treated with three antimicrobial combination; 60 cases survived, 4 cases died, and 1 case had no reported clinical outcome. Seven children with meningitis developed neurological complications, and one child with endocarditis developed glomerulonephritis. Conclusion Low-age children is the main population of SG infection in children, especially neonate, with bacteremia and meningitis being the most common. Most children have good clinical outcomes, and minority of children with bacteremia may die from septic shock.