Diagnosis of malaria in children is difficult without laboratory support because the symptoms and signs of malaria overlap with those of other febrile illnesses such as pneumonia. Nevertheless, in many parts of Africa diagnosis of malaria must be made without laboratory investigation. Therefore, a scoring system has been developed to assist peripheral health care workers in making this diagnosis. Four hundred and seven Gambian children aged 6 months to 9 years who presented to a rural clinic with fever or a recent history of fever were investigated. A diagnosis of malaria was made in 159 children who had a fever of 38 degrees C or more and malaria parasitaemia of 5000 parasites/microL or more. Symptoms and signs in children with malaria were compared with those in children with other febrile illnesses to identify features which predicted malaria. Symptoms and signs were incorporated into various logistic regression models to test which were best independent predictors of malaria and these regression models were used to construct simple scoring systems which predicted malaria. A nine terms model predicted clinical malaria with a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 61%, values comparable to those obtained by an experienced paediatrician without laboratory support. The ability of peripheral health care workers to diagnose malaria using this approach is now being investigated in a prospective study.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 March 2018.
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#7,642,348
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Outputs from Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene
#812
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Outputs of similar age
#11,101
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Outputs of similar age from Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene
#5
of 31 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,559,526 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,028 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.6. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 49,515 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 31 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.
