Population Screening for Chronic Q-Fever Seven Years after a Major Outbreak.

Autor: Gabriëlla Morroy, Wim van der Hoek, Jelle Albers, Roel A Coutinho, Chantal P Bleeker-Rovers, Peter M Schneeberger
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 10, Iss 7, p e0131777 (2015)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131777
Popis: From 2007 through 2010, the Netherlands experienced a large Q-fever epidemic, with 4,107 notifications. The most serious complication of Q-fever is chronic Q-fever.In 2014, we contacted all 2,161 adult inhabitants of the first village in the Netherlands affected by the Q-fever epidemic and offered to test for antibodies against Coxiella burnetii using immunofluorescence assay (IFA) to screen for chronic infections and assess whether large-scale population screening elsewhere is warranted.Of the 1,517 participants, 33.8% were IFA-positive. Six IFA-positive participants had an IgG phase I titer ≥1:512. Two of these six participants were previously diagnosed with chronic Q-fever. Chronic infection was diagnosed in one of the other four participants after clinical examination.Seven years after the initial outbreak, seroprevalence remains high, but the yield of screening the general population for chronic Q-fever is low. A policy of screening known high-risk groups for chronic Q-fever in outbreak areas directly following an outbreak might be more efficient than population screening. A cost-effectiveness analysis should also be performed before initiating a population screening program for chronic Q-fever.
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