ArticleNature2015
The role of rapid diagnostics in managing Ebola epidemics.
Article in Nature, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 62 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
62 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Rapid diagnostic tests versus RT-PCR for Ebola virus infections: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2022Pooled it
- Criteria required for an acceptable point-of-care test for UTI detection: Obtaining consensus using the Delphi technique.PloS one · 2018Guideline
- Ebola virus disease in the modern era: pathogenesis, therapeutic advances, vaccine strategies, and global health preparedness.Infection · 2026Review
- Decentralizing testing capacity of mpox in Africa: a narrative review.The Lancet regional health. Africa · 2026Review
- 2026 Bundibugyo virus outbreak: the role of genomics inMicrobial genomics · 2026Article
- Socioeconomic inequality and decomposition of core capacity in global health security: the role of health system.Journal of global health · 2025Article
- Evaluating the impact of trade-offs in diagnostic test accuracy, time-to-isolation, and accessibility on outbreak response for the Ebola virus: a mathematical modeling study.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Ensuring Biosecurity and Research Agility for Outbreak Response: A Researcher's Perspective on the Federal Nucleic Acid Screening Framework.Applied biosafety : journal of the American Biological Safety Association · 2025Article
- Rapid Decision Algorithm for Patient Triage during Ebola Outbreaks.Emerging infectious diseases · 2024Article
- A Flexible, Quantitative Plasmonic-Fluor Lateral Flow Assay for the Rapid Detection ofACS infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Assessing potential insights of an imperfect testing strategy: Parameter estimation and practical identifiability using early COVID-19 data in India.Communications in nonlinear science & numerical simulation · 2023Article
- Agnostic Sequencing for Detection of Viral Pathogens.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2023Review
- Fast and Sensitive Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleic Acid Using a Rapid Detection System Free of RNA Extraction.International journal of analytical chemistry · 2023Article
- Article
- Diagnostics of Ebola virus.Frontiers in public health · 2023Review
- Enhanced Enzymatically Amplified Metallization on Nanostructured Surfaces for Multiplexed Point-of-Care Electrical Detection of COVID-19 Biomarkers.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2022Article
- Patient delay in a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Tianjin, China from January to February 2020.Journal of the Formosan Medical Association = Taiwan yi zhi · 2022Article
- Modelling the Role of Human Behaviour in Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) Transmission Dynamics.Computational and mathematical methods in medicine · 2022Article
- Comparison and Evaluation of Real-Time Taqman PCR for Detection and Quantification of Ebolavirus.Viruses · 2021Article
- Ultrasensitive point-of-care immunoassay for secreted glycoprotein detects Ebola infection earlier than PCR.Science translational medicine · 2021Article
2 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Ebola emerged in West Africa around December 2013 and swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, giving rise to 27,748 confirmed, probable and suspected cases reported by 29 July 2015. Case diagnoses during the epidemic have relied on polymerase chain reaction-based tests. Owing to limited laboratory capacity and local transport infrastructure, the delays from sample collection to test results being available have often been 2 days or more. Point-of-care rapid diagnostic tests offer the potential to substantially reduce these delays. We review Ebola rapid diagnostic tests approved by the World Health Organization and those currently in development. Such rapid diagnostic tests could allow early triaging of patients, thereby reducing the potential for nosocomial transmission. In addition, despite the lower test accuracy, rapid diagnostic test-based diagnosis may be beneficial in some contexts because of the reduced time spent by uninfected individuals in health-care settings where they may be at increased risk of infection; this also frees up hospital beds. We use mathematical modelling to explore the potential benefits of diagnostic testing strategies involving rapid diagnostic tests alone and in combination with polymerase chain reaction testing. Our analysis indicates that the use of rapid diagnostic tests with sensitivity and specificity comparable with those currently under development always enhances control, whether evaluated at a health-care-unit or population level. If such tests had been available throughout the recent epidemic, we estimate, for Sierra Leone, that their use in combination with confirmatory polymerase chain-reaction testing might have reduced the scale of the epidemic by over a third.
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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.