ArticleBMC infectious diseases2025
Identifying malaria epidemic periods in Togo by health district and target group: a generalised additive model approach.
Article in BMC infectious diseases, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundInformation on seasonal malaria transmission is required for the development of targeted intervention programmes in malaria-endemic countries. This study aimed to determine the epidemic periods of malaria by health district and target group in Togo.
methodsMonthly data of confirmed malaria cases from 2013 to 2017 were analysed in this study. Data were routinely collected by the Togo National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP). They were aggregated by health district and target group (children < 5 years old, children ≥ 5 years old and adults, and pregnant women). Estimates of excess malaria cases compared to January were obtained through generalised additive models. The number of epidemic periods, the number of months with an excess of cases, the months with an excess of cases, the relative percentage increase of cases in the first month with an excess of cases, and the maximum relative percentage increase of cases and the corresponding month were described for each health district and target group.
resultsA total of 5,522,650 confirmed malaria cases were reported from 2013 to 2017 in Togo. Children < 5 years old, children ≥ 5 years old and adults, and pregnant women represented 36.6%, 58.5% and 4.9% of the confirmed malaria cases, respectively. A time lag of at least one month was generally observed between the onset of precipitation and the start of the epidemic periods in all three target groups. In the health districts of the Savanes region, the epidemic periods started later in the year and had a greater relative increase in malaria cases compared to January than in the health districts of the other regions. In contrast, in the health districts of the Maritime and Lome-commune regions, the epidemic periods were generally short or undetectable.
conclusionsThis study suggests that malaria control interventions should be tailored to local transmission, considering the onset and duration of epidemic periods at the district level. These results can be used to adapt the distribution of seasonal malaria chemoprevention in children < 5 years old, and then used for malaria risk stratification in addition to other data.
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.