Page 29 - Epidemiological studies on tuberculosis control and respiratory viruses

Distribution of respiratory viruses by illness severity in adults
participants was small, the virus specific comparisons were restricted to the four most commonly detected viruses in the HELIUS population: RV, hCoV, InfA, and RSV. Sex, age, month and year of sampling were a priori included in the logistic regression models.
To investigate the relative distribution of viruses between groups in PCR-positive individuals, the two groups of HELIUS participants were combined (groups 1, 2) and were compared to each of the hospital groups separately (groups 3, 4 and 5) as well as combined (group 1/2 vs group 3-5). Comparisons between groups were made for each respiratory virus detected by multiplex RT-PCR.
Spearman’s rank-order correlation test and linear regression analysis were done to determine relationships between viral load of RV, hCoV, InfA, RSV and approximated illness severity of groups. Both analyses were done with all groups as well as with inclusion of hospital groups only (group 3-5). Sex, age, month and year of sampling were a priori included in the linear regression models.
The level of significance in all analyses was P<0.05 and analyses were done in SPSS 22.0 (SPSS, Chicago, USA).
Ethics
The HELIUS study was approved by the AMC Medical Ethics Committee and informed
consent was obtained from each participant at study entry. According to the Dutch 6 law on medical research (WMO), article 1, no ethical approval is required when using
anonymous data from routine diagnostic databases, as was done for the diagnostic and
demographic data of AMC patients. The study was conducted according to the Dutch
code of conduct for responsible use of human tissue and medical research 2011 [9].
Results
Study population
Among 3,417 HELIUS participants enrolled during the period of study, 600 adult participants were selected for inclusion in the current study. From 588 of these,
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