ArticleThe American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene2015
An under-recognized influenza epidemic identified by rapid influenza testing, southern Sri Lanka, 2013.
Article in The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence, clinical characteristics and pattern of distribution of seasonal corona virus associated acute respiratory tract infections among adults and children in the Central Province of Sri Lanka from January 2020 to October 2022.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Academic global health collaboration: the Ruhuna-Duke partnership.Global health action · 2025Article
- Electronic Clinical Decision Support Tools: Strategies to Improve the Management of Lower Respiratory Tract Infections in Low-Resource Settings.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2024Article
- Host-response transcriptional biomarkers accurately discriminate bacterial and viral infections of global relevance.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Rapid Diagnostic Tests to Guide Case Management of and Improve Antibiotic Stewardship for Pediatric Acute Respiratory Illnesses in Resource-Constrained Settings: a Prospective Cohort Study in Southwestern Uganda.Microbiology spectrum · 2021Observational
- Outbreak of severe acute respiratory infection in Southern Province, Sri Lanka in 2018: a cross-sectional study.BMJ open · 2020Article
- Respiratory Viral Infection: An Underappreciated Cause of Acute Febrile Illness Admissions in Southern Sri Lanka.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2019Article
- Pathogens Causing Respiratory Tract Infections in Children Less Than 5 Years of Age in Senegal.Microbiology insights · 2019Article
- Use of clinical algorithms and rapid influenza testing to manage influenza-like illness: a cost-effectiveness analysis in Sri Lanka.BMJ global health · 2019Article
- Burden and Seasonality of Viral Acute Respiratory Tract Infections among Outpatients in Southern Sri Lanka.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2017Article
- Antibiotic overuse for acute respiratory tract infections in Sri Lanka: a qualitative study of outpatients and their physicians.BMC family practice · 2017Article
- Use of Rapid Influenza Testing to Reduce Antibiotic Prescriptions Among Outpatients with Influenza-Like Illness in Southern Sri Lanka.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Influenza accounts for a large burden of acute respiratory tract infections in high-income countries; data from lower-income settings are limited due to lack of confirmatory testing. Consecutive outpatients presenting to the largest tertiary care hospital in southern Sri Lanka were surveyed for influenza-like illness (ILI), defined as acute onset of fever ≥ 38.0°C and cough. Patients were administered a questionnaire and nasal/nasopharyngeal sampling for rapid influenza A/B testing. We enrolled 311 patients with ILI from March to November 2013: 170 (54.7%) children and 172 (55.3%) males. Approximately half (147, 47.3%) tested positive for influenza, but 253 (81.4%) were prescribed antibiotics. On bivariable analysis, symptoms associated with influenza included pain with breathing (P < 0.001), headache (P = 0.005), fatigue (P = 0.003), arthralgias (P = 0.003), and myalgias (P = 0.006) in children and pain with breathing (P = 0.01), vomiting (P = 0.03), and arthralgias (P = 0.03) in adults. Our final clinical predictive models had low sensitivity and fair specificity-50.0% (95% CI: 38.6-61.4%) and 83.2% (95% CI: 73.4-90.0%), respectively, in children and 52.2% (95% CI: 39.9-64.2%) and 81.4% (95% CI: 70.0-89.4%), respectively, in adults. Our study confirms the ability of rapid influenza testing to identify an influenza epidemic in a setting in which testing is not routinely available.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.