Virology & Mycology
Open Access

Assessing the performance of rapid influenza diagnostics tests in the community

2^nd International Conference on Flu

October 31-November 02, 2016 San Francisco, USA

Candice Keane and Olivia Varsaneux, Eleanor Gray, Perrine Pelosse, Andrew Hayward, Rosanna Peeling and Rachel A McKendry

University College London, UK
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
Imperial College London, UK

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Virol Mycol

Abstract :

With approximately, 3-5 million infections resulting in severe illness each year, Influenza causes significant burden on the health care system. In light of challenges of laboratory testing, rapid testing at the point of care offers earlier identification of influenza as the cause of respiratory infection. Rapid testing permits timely antiviral administration and prompts infection control management where necessary. Significant knowledge gaps exist in understanding the accuracy of Point-of-Care (POC) tests for diagnosing influenza in community settings. To address this we undertook a systematic review including studies of any design, containing data on the accuracy of POC assays in adults and children presenting with influenza-like illness to a community health care setting. We searched 3 electronic databases: Ovid MEDLINE, Embase Classic+Embase and Global Health. 1229 articles were screened with 18 (1.46%) fully meeting the eligibility criteria and were included in the final metaanalysis. 31 sub-studies were included in the analysis, as individual studies looked at multiple tests and sub-populations. Initial results indicate that the majority of studies were focused on children as a study population (55.6%) and were based in outpatient clinics (55.6%). 44.4% of studies used QuickVue Influenza A+B (Quidel) as their chosen POC test with 61.1% of studies analyzing their results at the point of care. Variable sensitivity and specificity were observed between assays, patient populations and test analysis settings in the sub-studies analysis. Sensitivities and specificities ranged between 15.4-82% and 94.4-100% respectively. Our preliminary results show that there is lower sensitivity of influenza POC tests when preformed in a community setting compared to manufacturer published data, however further investigation is needed to confirm this.

Biography :

Candice Keane is currently a PhD student at London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London. Her research is focused on developing a mobile connected point of care test for diagnosing influenza. She has graduated from the Queen Mary University of London with a Masters in Clinical Microbiology. She was trained as a Clinical Scientist in Microbiology and Virology before pursuing PhD. Her research sits within a larger project called i-sense, which aims to develop an early warning sensing systems for detecting infectious diseases, based on novel point of care devices and web based information for identifying disease outbreaks.

Email: candice.keane.09@ucl.ac.uk