Does knowing the influenza epidemic threshold has been reached influence the performance of influenza case definitions?
Background Disease surveillance using adequate case definitions is very important. The objective of the study was to compare the performance of influenza case definitions and influenza symptoms in the first two epidemic weeks with respect to other epidemic weeks. Methods We analysed cases of acute r...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica Sant Pau (IIB Sant Pau) |
| Repositorio: | r-IIB SANT PAU. Repositorio Institucional de Producción Científica del Instituto de Investigación Biomédica Sant Pau |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:iibsantpau.fundanetsuite.com:p15976 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://iibsantpau.fundanetsuite.com/Publicaciones/ProdCientif/PublicacionFrw.aspx?id=15976 https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85133327749&doi=10.1371%2fjournal.pone.0270740&partnerID=40&md5=f314a0004dc55c38d5edb4a595056d0c |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | adolescent adult aged Article Catalonia child comparative study diagnostic procedure epidemic fever flu like syndrome general practitioner groups by age human influenza laboratory test major clinical study predictive value respiratory tract infection retrospective study season sentinel surveillance Child Epidemics Fever Humans Influenza, Human Respiratory Tract Infections Seasons Sentinel Surveillance |
| Sumario: | Background Disease surveillance using adequate case definitions is very important. The objective of the study was to compare the performance of influenza case definitions and influenza symptoms in the first two epidemic weeks with respect to other epidemic weeks. Methods We analysed cases of acute respiratory infection detected by the network of sentinel primary care physicians of Catalonia for 10 seasons. We calculated the diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the first two epidemic weeks and for other epidemic weeks. Results A total of 4,338 samples were collected in the epidemic weeks, of which 2,446 (56.4%) were positive for influenza. The most predictive case definition for laboratory-confirmed influenza was the WHO case definition for influenza-like illness (ILI) in the first two epidemic weeks (DOR 2.10; 95% CI 1.57-2.81) and in other epidemic weeks (DOR 2.31; 95% CI 1.96- 2.72). The most predictive symptom was fever. After knowing that epidemic threshold had been reached, the DOR of the ILI WHO case definition in children aged <5 years and cough and fever in this group increased (190%, 170% and 213%, respectively). Conclusions During influenza epidemics, differences in the performance of the case definition and the discriminative ability of symptoms were found according to whether it was known that the epidemic threshold had been reached or not. This suggests that sentinel physicians are stricter in selecting samples to send to the laboratory from patients who present symptoms more specific to influenza after rather than before an influenza epidemic has been declared. © 2022 Soldevila et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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