ObjectiveTo investigate the correlation between macular cherry red spot (CS) and severity of neurological manifestations in Chinese children with sialidosis (SD) type I. MethodsA evidence-based medical study. "China", "Sialidosis" and "Sialidoses" were used as Chinese and English search terms. The literature was searched in CNKI, Wanfang and PubMed. The cases were all from China and matched the diagnostic criteria. According to the presence or absence of CS in the fundus, the SD children were divided into a group with CS (+) and a group without CS (−), and the correlation between the occurrence of ocular CS and neurological manifestations was compared with meta-analysis by RevMan 5.3 software. ResultsSixty-eight studies were initially retrieved according to the search strategy, and 17 studies were finally included, and 5 studies with CS+ and CS− were meta-analyzed. Among the 43 patients, 28 were male and 15 were female, with a median age of 12 years. Visual impairment was observed in 37 cases (90.2%, 37/41, 2 cases not recorded), and CS was present in 24 cases (55.8%, 24/43). The most common neurological manifestation was myoclonus (97.7%, 42/43), followed by cerebellar ataxia (95.1%, 39/41, 2 cases not recorded) and seizures (91.4%, 32/35, 8 cases not recorded). Pathogenic NEU1 gene mutations were detected in 42 cases and one case was undocumented. The incidence of seizure in group CS+ (100%, 20/20) was higher than that in group CS− (80%, 12/15). Meta-analysis showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the incidence of myoclonus or ataxia [relative risk (RR)=1.13, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.79-1.63, P=0.49] and seizure (RR=1.13, 95% CI 0.84-2.06, P=0.24) among the children in the CS+ and CS− groups. ConclusionsThe incidence of ocular CS in Chinese children with type I SD was 55.8%. There was no correlation with neurological manifestations, however the incidence of seizure was significantly higher in patients with CS than in others without CS.