Pathogens detected using a syndromic molecular diagnostic platform in patients hospitalized with severe respiratory illness in South Africa in 2017

Prevalence of respiratory syncytial virus infection and associated factors in children aged under five years with severe acute respiratory illness and influenza-like illness in Ethiopia

“…The higher positivity rate from previous studies other than ours might be owing to a single densely populated slummy study site in Kenya and the use of combined oropharyngeal and nasopharyngeal specimen testing and a shorter date of disease onset during study participant enrollment in Morocco. The lower positivity rate of our study finding compared with the 24.4% of South Africa [24] might be owing to the study participant characteristics, which included HIV-positive cases and the majority of them were children under 1 year of age, in whom underlying health conditions and age play a role in RSV infection risk in many other studies. Moreover, the shorter date of sample collection from date disease onset and the very young age (>3 months) of study participants, the majority of whom have underlying health conditions, included in the study from India might also be a reason for the higher positivity rate than ours.…”