ArticleClinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America2017
Limited Utility of Polymerase Chain Reaction in Induced Sputum Specimens for Determining the Causes of Childhood Pneumonia in Resource-Poor Settings: Findings From the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) Study.
Article in Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
23 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence of atypical pathogens in patients with severe pneumonia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ open · 2023Pooled it
- Aetiology of childhood pneumonia in low- and middle-income countries in the era of vaccination: a systematic review.Journal of global health · 2022Pooled it
- Comparison of detection rate of 16 sampling methods for respiratory viruses: a Bayesian network meta-analysis of clinical data and systematic review.BMJ global health · 2020Pooled it
- Adenoviral Infections in Immunocompetent Children.Indian journal of pediatrics · 2025Review
- C-reactive protein and serum amyloid A protein as complementary biomarkers in differentiating viral and bacterial community-acquired pneumonia in children.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
- CRISPR-mediated detection of Pneumocystis transcripts in bronchoalveolar, oropharyngeal, and serum specimens for Pneumocystis pneumonia diagnosis.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2025Article
- Combined use of respiratory multiplex PCR and procalcitonin to reduce antibiotic exposure in sickle-cell adult patients with acute chest syndrome (The ANTIBIO-STA study): a randomised, controlled, open-label trial.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2025Article
- The global burden of hospitalisation due to pneumonia caused byEClinicalMedicine · 2022Article
- Article
- Pathogen distribution and bacterial resistance in children with severe pneumonia: A single-center retrospective study.Medicine · 2021Article
- Differential Markers of Bacterial and Viral Infections in Children for Point-of-Care Testing.Trends in molecular medicine · 2020Review
- Challenges in the diagnosis of paediatric pneumonia in intervention field trials: recommendations from a pneumonia field trial working group.The Lancet. Respiratory medicine · 2019Review
- Causes of severe pneumonia requiring hospital admission in children without HIV infection from Africa and Asia: the PERCH multi-country case-control study.Lancet (London, England) · 2019Article
- Comparison of respiratory pathogen yields from Nasopharyngeal/Oropharyngeal swabs and sputum specimens collected from hospitalized adults in rural Western Kenya.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Comparing the yield of oropharyngeal swabs and sputum for detection of 11 common pathogens in hospitalized children with lower respiratory tract infection.Virology journal · 2019Article
- Pediatric Community-Acquired Pneumonia in the United States: Changing Epidemiology, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Challenges, and Areas for Future Research.Infectious disease clinics of North America · 2018Review
- Etiology of Childhood Pneumonia: What We Know, and What We Need to Know! : Based on 5th Dr. IC Verma Excellence Oration Award.Indian journal of pediatrics · 2018Review
- Colonization Density of the Upper Respiratory Tract as a Predictor of Pneumonia-Haemophilus influenzae, Moraxella catarrhalis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Pneumocystis jirovecii.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2017Article
- Microscopic Analysis and Quality Assessment of Induced Sputum From Children With Pneumonia in the PERCH Study.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2017Article
- The Diagnostic Utility of Induced Sputum Microscopy and Culture in Childhood Pneumonia.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
39 authors at 16 institutions in 10 countries.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND.: Sputum examination can be useful in diagnosing the cause of pneumonia in adults but is less well established in children. We sought to assess the diagnostic utility of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for detection of respiratory viruses and bacteria in induced sputum (IS) specimens from children hospitalized with severe or very severe pneumonia. METHODS.: Among children aged 1-59 months, we compared organism detection by multiplex PCR in IS and nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal (NP/OP) specimens. To assess whether organism presence or density in IS specimens was associated with chest radiographic evidence of pneumonia (radiographic pneumonia), we compared prevalence and density in IS specimens from children with radiographic pneumonia and children with suspected pneumonia but without chest radiographic changes or clinical or laboratory findings suggestive of pneumonia (nonpneumonia group). RESULTS.: Among 4232 cases with World Health Organization-defined severe or very severe pneumonia, we identified 1935 (45.7%) with radiographic pneumonia and 573 (13.5%) with nonpneumonia. The organism detection yield was marginally improved with IS specimens (96.2% vs 92.4% for NP/OP specimens for all viruses combined [P = .41]; 96.9% vs 93.3% for all bacteria combined [P = .01]). After accounting for presence in NP/OP specimens, no organism was detected more frequently in the IS specimens from the radiographic pneumonia compared with the nonpneumonia cases. Among high-quality IS specimens, there were no statistically significant differences in organism density, except with cytomegalovirus, for which there was a higher quantity in the IS specimens from cases with radiographic pneumonia compared with the nonpneumonia cases (median cycle threshold value, 27.9 vs 28.5, respectively; P = .01). CONCLUSIONS.: Using advanced molecular methods with IS specimens provided little additional diagnostic information beyond that obtained with NP/OP swab specimens.
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.