Scholars@Duke
Matthew P. Rubach

Matthew P. Rubach

Associate Professor of Medicine
Medicine, Infectious Diseases
matthew.rubach@duke.edu
181 Hanes House, Box 90519, Durham, NC 27710

Selected Publications

Mass Spectrometry-Based Quantification of Proteins and Post-Translational Modifications in Dried Blood: Longitudinal Sampling of Patients With Sepsis in Tanzania.

Journal Article Proteomics · December 3, 2025 The proteomic analysis of blood is routine for disease phenotyping and biomarker development. Blood is commonly separated into soluble and cellular fractions. However, this can introduce pre-analytical variability, and analysis of a single component (which ... Full text Link to item Cite

BAYESIAN LEARNING OF CLINICALLY MEANINGFUL SEPSIS PHENOTYPES IN NORTHERN TANZANIA.

Journal Article Ann Appl Stat · September 2025 Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. Recently, researchers have hypothesized that sepsis consists of a heterogeneous spectrum of distinct subtypes, motivating several studies to identify clusters of se ... Full text Link to item Cite

Epidemiologic and Genomic Characterization of an Outbreak of Rift Valley Fever Among Humans and Dairy Cattle in Northern Tanzania.

Journal Article J Infect Dis · August 14, 2025 BACKGROUND: A periurban outbreak of Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) among dairy cattle from May through August 2018 in northern Tanzania was detected through testing samples from prospective livestock abortion surveillance. We sought to identify concurrent ... Full text Link to item Cite

The burden of multimorbidity-associated acute hospital admissions in Malawi and Tanzania: a prospective multicentre cohort study.

Journal Article Lancet Glob Health · July 2025 BACKGROUND: The global burden of multimorbidity-the coexistence of two or more long-term conditions-is increasing. Limited access to primary care in sub-Saharan Africa means acute hospital admission is often the sentinel multimorbidity presentation. This p ... Full text Link to item Cite

Healthcare utilisation for febrile diseases in northern Tanzania: a randomised population-based cluster survey.

Journal Article BMJ Glob Health · March 6, 2025 BACKGROUND: We conducted a randomised population-based cluster survey in northern Tanzania to assess care-seeking behaviours in the context of a febrile illness. Our objectives were to determine the most effective points for intervention during initial fev ... Full text Link to item Cite

Comparison of Paired Immunofluorescent Antibody Serology and Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction Testing for the Detection of Acute Q Fever among Febrile Patients in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, 2012-2014.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · March 5, 2025 Acute Q fever diagnosis via paired serology is problematic because it requires follow-up for convalescent sample collection; as such, it cannot provide a diagnosis to inform a treatment decision at the time of acute presentation. Real-time polymerase chain ... Full text Link to item Cite

Seroprevalence and risk factors for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus exposure among febrile patients in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Trop Med Int Health · March 2025 BACKGROUND: Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is a tick-borne zoonotic disease that may be severe and is present in many African countries. We aimed to understand the seroprevalence and risk for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus in Tanzania by testing ar ... Full text Link to item Cite

TaqMan Array Card real-time polymerase chain reaction panel to detect pathogens in whole blood of febrile inpatients in northern Tanzania, 2016-2019.

Journal Article Trop Med Int Health · March 2025 BACKGROUND: Acute febrile illness is a common reason for seeking healthcare in low- and middle-income countries. We describe the diagnostic utility of a TaqMan Array Card (TAC) real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) panel for pathogen detection in paedi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Derivation and Internal Validation of a Clinical Prediction Model for Diagnosis of Spotted Fever Group Rickettsioses in Northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Open Forum Infect Dis · March 2025 Spotted fever group rickettsioses (SFGR) pose a global threat as emerging zoonotic infectious diseases; however, timely and cost-effective diagnostic tools are currently limited. We used data from 449 patients presenting to 2 hospitals in northern Tanzania ... Full text Link to item Cite

Sepsis in Northern Tanzania: A Prospective Observational Study of Clinical Characteristics, Management, and Outcomes for Adolescents and Adults With Sepsis.

Journal Article Open Forum Infect Dis · January 2025 BACKGROUND: Despite a high burden of sepsis in Sub-Saharan Africa, clinical data for adolescent and adult sepsis in this setting are limited. We sought to describe clinical characteristics, management, and outcomes in adolescents and adults with sepsis in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Clinical characteristics, antimicrobial resistance, and mortality of neonatal bloodstream infections in Northern Tanzania, 2022-2023.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2025 Neonatal bloodstream infections (BSI) make a substantial contribution to morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but data on the epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Tanzania are limited. We describe the prevalenc ... Full text Link to item Cite

Risk Factors for Spotted Fever Group Rickettsioses in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania.

Journal Article Open Forum Infect Dis · December 2024 BACKGROUND: Knowledge gaps exist on risk factors for spotted fever group rickettsioses (SFGR) in sub-Saharan Africa. We sought to identify SFGR risk factors in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. METHODS: We recruited febrile patients presenting at 2 hospitals i ... Full text Link to item Cite

Discordant phylodynamic and spatiotemporal transmission patterns driving the long-term persistence and evolution of human coronaviruses.

Journal Article Npj Viruses · October 17, 2024 Four distinct species of human coronaviruses (HCoVs) circulate in humans. Despite the recent attention due to SARS-CoV-2, a comprehensive understanding of the molecular epidemiology and genomic evolution of HCoVs remains unclear. Here, we employed primary ... Full text Link to item Cite

Metagenomic Detection of Bacterial Zoonotic Pathogens among Febrile Patients, Tanzania, 2007-20091.

Journal Article Emerg Infect Dis · August 2024 Bacterial zoonoses are established causes of severe febrile illness in East Africa. Within a fever etiology study, we applied a high-throughput 16S rRNA metagenomic assay validated for detecting bacterial zoonotic pathogens. We enrolled febrile patients ad ... Full text Link to item Cite

Prevalence and risk factors for Q fever, spotted fever group rickettsioses, and typhus group rickettsioses in a pastoralist community of northern Tanzania, 2016-2017.

Journal Article Trop Med Int Health · May 2024 BACKGROUND: In northern Tanzania, Q fever, spotted fever group (SFG) rickettsioses, and typhus group (TG) rickettsioses are common causes of febrile illness. We sought to describe the prevalence and risk factors for these zoonoses in a pastoralist communit ... Full text Link to item Cite

Global distribution of Leptospira serovar isolations and detections from animal host species: A systematic review and online database.

Journal Article Trop Med Int Health · March 2024 OBJECTIVES: Leptospira, the spirochaete causing leptospirosis, can be classified into >250 antigenically distinct serovars. Although knowledge of the animal host species and geographic distribution of Leptospira serovars is critical to understand the human ... Full text Link to item Cite

Complete genome sequence of Brucella abortus isolated from a human blood culture sample in Tanzania.

Journal Article Microbiol Resour Announc · February 15, 2024 Brucella abortus causes infections in humans and livestock. Bacterial isolates are challenging to obtain, and very little is known about the genomic epidemiology of this species in Africa. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of a Brucella abortus ... Full text Link to item Cite

Host-response transcriptional biomarkers accurately discriminate bacterial and viral infections of global relevance.

Journal Article Sci Rep · December 18, 2023 Diagnostic limitations challenge management of clinically indistinguishable acute infectious illness globally. Gene expression classification models show great promise distinguishing causes of fever. We generated transcriptional data for a 294-participant ... Full text Link to item Cite

Prevalence and risk factors for human leptospirosis at a hospital serving a pastoralist community, Endulen, Tanzania.

Journal Article PLoS Negl Trop Dis · December 2023 BACKGROUND: Leptospirosis is suspected to be a major cause of illness in rural Tanzania associated with close contact with livestock. We sought to determine leptospirosis prevalence, identify infecting Leptospira serogroups, and investigate risk factors fo ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Etiologic Investigation of Patients Diagnosed with Bacteriologically Unconfirmed Tuberculosis in Tanzania.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · October 4, 2023 Globally, half of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) are diagnosed clinically without bacteriologic confirmation. In clinically diagnosed PTB patients, we assessed both the proportion in whom PTB could be bacteriologically confirmed by reference st ... Full text Link to item Cite

Antibacterial Utilization for Febrile Illnesses and Laboratory-Confirmed Bloodstream Infections in Northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Open Forum Infect Dis · August 2023 BACKGROUND: We describe antibacterial use in light of microbiology data and treatment guidelines for common febrile syndromes in Moshi, Tanzania. METHODS: We compared data from 2 hospital-based prospective cohort studies, cohort 1 (2011-2014) and cohort 2 ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

'One Health´ approach to end zoonotic TB.

Journal Article Int J Tuberc Lung Dis · February 1, 2023 Mycobacterium bovis has a wide host range causing TB in animals, both in wildlife and cattle (bovine TB bTB), and in humans (zoonotic TB zTB). The real burden of bovine and zoonotic TB (b/zTB) remains unknown due to diagnostic challenges. Although progress ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Prevalence and predictors of uncontrolled hypertension, diabetes, and obesity among adults with HIV in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Glob Public Health · December 2022 HIV is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but there has been less study of cardiovascular comorbidities among people with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. In a cross-sectional observational study, Tanzanian adults presenting for outpatient ... Full text Link to item Cite

An outbreak of Rift Valley fever among peri-urban dairy cattle in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg · November 1, 2022 BACKGROUND: Human and animal cases of Rift Valley fever (RVF) are typically only reported during large outbreaks. The occurrence of RVF cases that go undetected by national surveillance systems in the period between these outbreaks is considered likely. Th ... Full text Link to item Cite

Inter-epidemic Rift Valley fever virus infection incidence and risks for zoonotic spillover in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article PLoS Negl Trop Dis · October 2022 Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is a mosquito-borne pathogen that has caused epidemics involving people and animals across Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. A number of studies have found evidence for the circulation of RVFV among livestock between these ep ... Full text Link to item Cite

Clinical evaluation of the BioFire Global Fever Panel for the identification of malaria, leptospirosis, chikungunya, and dengue from whole blood: a prospective, multicentre, cross-sectional diagnostic accuracy study.

Journal Article Lancet Infect Dis · September 2022 BACKGROUND: Acute febrile illness is a common presentation for patients at hospitals globally. Assays that can diagnose a variety of common pathogens in blood could help to establish a diagnosis for targeted disease management. We aimed to evaluate the per ... Full text Link to item Cite

Performance of Xpert Ultra nasopharyngeal swab for identification of tuberculosis deaths in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Clin Microbiol Infect · August 2022 OBJECTIVE: Numerous tuberculosis (TB) deaths remain undetected in low-resource endemic settings. With autopsy-confirmed tuberculosis as our standard, we assessed the diagnostic performance of Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra (Ultra; Cepheid) on nasopharyngeal specimens ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Facility-based disease surveillance and Bayesian hierarchical modeling to estimate endemic typhoid fever incidence, Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania, 2007-2018.

Journal Article PLoS Negl Trop Dis · July 2022 Growing evidence suggests considerable variation in endemic typhoid fever incidence at some locations over time, yet few settings have multi-year incidence estimates to inform typhoid control measures. We sought to describe a decade of typhoid fever incide ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Incidence Estimates of Acute Q Fever and Spotted Fever Group Rickettsioses, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, from 2007 to 2008 and from 2012 to 2014.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · December 20, 2021 Q fever and spotted fever group rickettsioses (SFGR) are common causes of severe febrile illness in northern Tanzania. Incidence estimates are needed to characterize the disease burden. Using hybrid surveillance-coupling case-finding at two referral hospit ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Trends in fever case management for febrile inpatients in a low malaria incidence setting of Tanzania.

Journal Article Trop Med Int Health · December 2021 OBJECTIVES: In 2010, WHO published guidelines emphasising parasitological confirmation of malaria before treatment. We present data on changes in fever case management in a low malaria transmission setting of northern Tanzania after 2010. METHODS: We compa ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Performance Assessment of the Universal Vital Assessment Score vs Other Illness Severity Scores for Predicting Risk of In-Hospital Death Among Adult Febrile Inpatients in Northern Tanzania, 2016-2019.

Journal Article JAMA Netw Open · December 1, 2021 IMPORTANCE: Severity scores are used to improve triage of hospitalized patients in high-income settings, but the scores may not translate well to low- and middle-income settings such as sub-Saharan Africa. OBJECTIVE: To assess the performance of the Univer ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Cerebrospinal Fluid Pterins, Pterin-Dependent Neurotransmitters, and Mortality in Pediatric Cerebral Malaria.

Journal Article J Infect Dis · October 28, 2021 BACKGROUND: Cerebral malaria (CM) pathogenesis remains incompletely understood. Having shown low systemic levels of tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), an enzymatic cofactor for neurotransmitter synthesis, we hypothesized that BH4 and BH4-dependent neurotransmitter ... Full text Link to item Cite

On the robustness of latent class models for diagnostic testing with no gold standard.

Journal Article Stat Med · September 30, 2021 It is difficult to estimate sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic tests when there is no gold standard. Latent class models have been proposed as a potential solution as they provide estimates without the need for a gold standard. Using a motivating ex ... Full text Link to item Cite

Degradation of endothelial glycocalyx in Tanzanian children with falciparum malaria.

Journal Article FASEB J · September 2021 A layer of glycocalyx covers the vascular endothelium serving important protective and homeostatic functions. The objective of this study was to determine if breakdown of the endothelial glycocalyx (eGC) occurs during malaria infection in children. Measure ... Full text Link to item Cite

Incidence of Acute Myocardial Infarction in Northern Tanzania: A Modeling Approach Within a Prospective Observational Study.

Journal Article J Am Heart Assoc · August 3, 2021 Background Rigorous incidence data for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in sub-Saharan Africa are lacking. Consequently, modeling studies based on limited data have suggested that the burden of AMI and AMI-associated mortality in sub-Saharan Africa is low ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Performance characteristics and costs of serological tests for brucellosis in a pastoralist community of northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Sci Rep · March 9, 2021 The control of brucellosis across sub-Saharan Africa is hampered by the lack of standardized testing and the use of tests with poor performance. This study evaluated the performance and costs of serological assays for human brucellosis in a pastoralist com ... Full text Link to item Cite

Investigation of Melioidosis Using Blood Culture and Indirect Hemagglutination Assay Serology among Patients with Fever, Northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · December 2020 Prediction models indicate that melioidosis may be common in parts of East Africa, but there are few empiric data. We evaluated the prevalence of melioidosis among patients presenting with fever to hospitals in Tanzania. Patients with fever were enrolled a ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Molecular Detection and Typing of Pathogenic Leptospira in Febrile Patients and Phylogenetic Comparison with Leptospira Detected among Animals in Tanzania.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · October 2020 Molecular data are required to improve our understanding of the epidemiology of leptospirosis in Africa and to identify sources of human infection. We applied molecular methods to identify the infecting Leptospira species and genotypes among patients hospi ... Full text Link to item Cite

An In-Depth Examination of Reasons for Autopsy Acceptance and Refusal in Northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · October 2020 Uncertainty about the causes of death (COD) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has been recognized as a constraint to global health and development. Although complete diagnostic autopsy (CDA) is the best way to assess COD, it is uncommon in LMICs ... Full text Link to item Cite

Estimating acute human leptospirosis incidence in northern Tanzania using sentinel site and community behavioural surveillance.

Journal Article Zoonoses Public Health · August 2020 Many infectious diseases lack robust estimates of incidence from endemic areas, and extrapolating incidence when there are few locations with data remains a major challenge in burden of disease estimation. We sought to combine sentinel surveillance with co ... Full text Link to item Cite

"If You Have No Money, You Might Die": A Qualitative Study of Sociocultural and Health System Barriers to Care for Decedent Febrile Inpatients in Northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · July 2020 Infectious diseases are a leading cause of mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) despite effective treatments. To study the sociocultural and health system barriers to care, we conducted a qualitative social autopsy study of patients who di ... Full text Link to item Cite

A prospective study of Escherichia coli bloodstream infection among adolescents and adults in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg · May 7, 2020 BACKGROUND: Characterization of the epidemiology of Escherichia coli bloodstream infection (BSI) in sub-Saharan Africa is lacking. We studied patients with E. coli BSI in northern Tanzania to describe host risk factors for infection and to describe the ant ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Prevalence and speciation of brucellosis in febrile patients from a pastoralist community of Tanzania.

Journal Article Sci Rep · April 27, 2020 Brucellosis is an endemic zoonosis in sub-Saharan Africa. Pastoralists are at high risk of infection but data on brucellosis from these communities are scarce. The study objectives were to: estimate the prevalence of human brucellosis, identify the Brucell ... Full text Link to item Cite

Sensitivity of C-reactive protein for the identification of patients with laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article Trop Med Int Health · March 2020 OBJECTIVE: Identifying febrile patients requiring antibacterial treatment is challenging, particularly in low-resource settings. In South-East Asia, C-reactive protein (CRP) has been demonstrated to be highly sensitive and moderately specific in detecting ... Full text Link to item Cite

Zoonotic causes of febrile illness in malaria endemic countries: a systematic review.

Journal Article Lancet Infect Dis · February 2020 Fever is one of the most common reasons for seeking health care globally and most human pathogens are zoonotic. We conducted a systematic review to describe the occurrence and distribution of zoonotic causes of human febrile illness reported in malaria end ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Prevalence of Community-Onset Bloodstream Infections among Hospitalized Patients in Africa and Asia.

Journal Article Antimicrob Agents Chemother · December 20, 2019 Community-onset bloodstream infections (CO-BSI) are major causes of severe febrile illness and death worldwide. In light of new data and the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) among pathogens causing BSI, we undertook a systematic review of ... Full text Link to item Cite

Diagnostic accuracy of leptospirosis whole-cell lateral flow assays: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Journal Article Clin Microbiol Infect · April 2019 BACKGROUND: Leptospirosis is under-diagnosed by clinicians in many high-incidence countries, because reference diagnostic tests are largely unavailable. Lateral flow assays (LFA) that use antigen derived from heat-treated whole cell Leptospira biflexa sero ... Full text Link to item Cite

Self-medication with non-prescribed pharmaceutical agents in an area of low malaria transmission in northern Tanzania: a community-based survey.

Journal Article Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg · April 1, 2019 BACKGROUND: Self-treatment with antimicrobials is common in sub-Saharan Africa. Little is known about the prevalence of this practice where malaria transmission intensity is low, and little is known about the prevalence of self-treatment with other medicat ... Full text Link to item Cite

Kinetic and Cross-Sectional Studies on the Genesis of Hypoargininemia in Severe Pediatric Plasmodium falciparum Malaria.

Journal Article Infect Immun · April 2019 The low bioavailability of nitric oxide (NO) and its precursor, arginine, contributes to the microvascular pathophysiology of severe falciparum malaria. To better characterize the mechanisms underlying hypoargininemia in severe malaria, we measured the pla ... Full text Link to item Cite

Knowledge of myocardial infarction symptoms and perceptions of self-risk in Tanzania.

Journal Article Am Heart J · April 2019 BACKGROUND: Little is known about community knowledge of myocardial infarction symptoms and perceptions of self-risk in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: A community survey was conducted in northern Tanzania, where the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors ... Full text Link to item Cite

Perceptions of chest pain and healthcare seeking behavior for chest pain in northern Tanzania: A community-based survey.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2019 BACKGROUND: Little is known about community perceptions of chest pain and healthcare seeking behavior for chest pain in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: A two-stage randomized population-based cluster survey with selection proportional to population size was p ... Full text Link to item Cite

Perceptions of Stroke and Associated Health-Care-Seeking Behavior in Northern Tanzania: A Community-Based Study.

Journal Article Neuroepidemiology · 2019 BACKGROUND: Little is known about knowledge of stroke symptoms, perceptions of self-risk, and health-care-seeking behavior for stroke in East Africa. METHODS: A 2-stage randomized population-based cluster survey with selection proportional to population si ... Full text Link to item Cite

Predicting Mortality for Adolescent and Adult Patients with Fever in Resource-Limited Settings.

Conference Am J Trop Med Hyg · November 2018 Febrile illnesses are a major cause of mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Early identification of patients at increased risk of death may avert adverse outcomes. We aimed to independently evaluate the performance of the Modified Early Warning Score, quick Se ... Full text Link to item Cite

Risk factors for human acute leptospirosis in northern Tanzania.

Journal Article PLoS Negl Trop Dis · June 2018 INTRODUCTION: Leptospirosis is a major cause of febrile illness in Africa but little is known about risk factors for human infection. We conducted a cross-sectional study to investigate risk factors for acute leptospirosis and Leptospira seropositivity amo ... Full text Link to item Cite

Incidence of human brucellosis in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania in the periods 2007-2008 and 2012-2014.

Journal Article Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg · March 1, 2018 BACKGROUND: Brucellosis causes substantial morbidity among humans and their livestock. There are few robust estimates of the incidence of brucellosis in sub-Saharan Africa. Using cases identified through sentinel hospital surveillance and health care utili ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Risk Factors for Human Brucellosis in Northern Tanzania.

Conference Am J Trop Med Hyg · February 2018 Little is known about the epidemiology of human brucellosis in sub-Saharan Africa. This hampers prevention and control efforts at the individual and population levels. To evaluate risk factors for brucellosis in northern Tanzania, we conducted a study of p ... Full text Link to item Cite

Sociocultural and health system factors associated with mortality among febrile inpatients in Tanzania: a prospective social biopsy cohort study.

Journal Article BMJ Glob Health · 2018 INTRODUCTION: Communicable diseases are the leading causes of death in Tanzania despite the existence of effective treatment tools. We aimed to assess the sociocultural and health system factors associated with mortality from febrile illness in northern Ta ... Full text Link to item Cite

One Health contributions towards more effective and equitable approaches to health in low- and middle-income countries.

Journal Article Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci · July 19, 2017 Emerging zoonoses with pandemic potential are a stated priority for the global health security agenda, but endemic zoonoses also have a major societal impact in low-resource settings. Although many endemic zoonoses can be treated, timely diagnosis and appr ... Full text Link to item Cite

Derivation and validation of a universal vital assessment (UVA) score: a tool for predicting mortality in adult hospitalised patients in sub-Saharan Africa.

Journal Article BMJ Glob Health · 2017 BACKGROUND: Critical illness is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Identifying patients with the highest risk of death could help with resource allocation and clinical decision making. Accordingly, we derived and valida ... Full text Link to item Cite

Comparison of the Estimated Incidence of Acute Leptospirosis in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania between 2007-08 and 2012-14.

Journal Article PLoS Negl Trop Dis · December 2016 BACKGROUND: The sole report of annual leptospirosis incidence in continental Africa of 75-102 cases per 100,000 population is from a study performed in August 2007 through September 2008 in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. To evaluate the stability of t ... Full text Link to item Cite

Challenges of Maintaining Good Clinical Laboratory Practices in Low-Resource Settings:  A Health Program Evaluation Framework Case Study From East Africa.

Journal Article Am J Clin Pathol · August 2016 OBJECTIVES: Using a clinical research laboratory as a case study, we sought to characterize barriers to maintaining Good Clinical Laboratory Practice (GCLP) services in a developing world setting. METHODS: Using a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevent ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Monocyte polarization in children with falciparum malaria: relationship to nitric oxide insufficiency and disease severity.

Journal Article Sci Rep · July 7, 2016 We earlier established that nitric oxide (NO) is protective against severe malaria and that arginine and NO levels are reduced in malaria patients. We now show that an M2-like blood monocyte phenotype is significantly associated with hypoargininemia, NO in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Validation and Identification of Invasive Salmonella Serotypes in Sub-Saharan Africa by Multiplex Polymerase Chain Reaction.

Journal Article Clin Infect Dis · March 15, 2016 Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi and nontyphoidal Salmonella (NTS) cause the majority of bloodstream infections in sub-Saharan Africa; however, serotyping is rarely performed. We validated a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay with the White-K ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

ID learning unit-Diagnostics update: Current laboratory methods for rapid pathogen identification in patients with bloodstream infections

Journal Article Open Forum Infectious Diseases · December 1, 2015 Diagnostic assays that rapidly identify bloodstream pathogens have the potential to improve patient outcomes and antibiotic stewardship efforts. Current tests are based on the detection of nucleic acids that are specific to a targeted pathogen or based on ... Full text Cite

Bloodstream Infections and Frequency of Pretreatment Associated With Age and Hospitalization Status in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Journal Article Clin Infect Dis · November 1, 2015 BACKGROUND: The clinical diagnosis of bacterial bloodstream infections (BSIs) in sub-Saharan Africa is routinely confused with malaria due to overlapping symptoms. The Typhoid Surveillance in Africa Program (TSAP) recruited febrile inpatients and outpatien ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Impaired systemic tetrahydrobiopterin bioavailability and increased oxidized biopterins in pediatric falciparum malaria: association with disease severity.

Journal Article PLoS Pathog · March 2015 Decreased bioavailability of nitric oxide (NO) is a major contributor to the pathophysiology of severe falciparum malaria. Tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) is an enzyme cofactor required for NO synthesis from L-arginine. We hypothesized that systemic levels of BH ... Full text Link to item Cite

Etiologies of illness among patients meeting integrated management of adolescent and adult illness district clinician manual criteria for severe infections in northern Tanzania: implications for empiric antimicrobial therapy.

Journal Article Am J Trop Med Hyg · February 2015 We describe the laboratory-confirmed etiologies of illness among participants in a hospital-based febrile illness cohort study in northern Tanzania who retrospectively met Integrated Management of Adolescent and Adult Illness District Clinician Manual (IMA ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Dimethylarginines: endogenous inhibitors of nitric oxide synthesis in children with falciparum malaria.

Journal Article J Infect Dis · September 15, 2014 BACKGROUND: Nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability is impaired in children and adults with severe falciparum malaria (SM). Asymmetric-dimethylarginine (ADMA) limits NO production by inhibiting NO synthase and is increased in adult SM. The role of ADMA in the pa ... Full text Link to item Cite

Epidemiology of Coxiella burnetii infection in Africa: a OneHealth systematic review.

Journal Article PLoS Negl Trop Dis · April 2014 BACKGROUND: Q fever is a common cause of febrile illness and community-acquired pneumonia in resource-limited settings. Coxiella burnetii, the causative pathogen, is transmitted among varied host species, but the epidemiology of the organism in Africa is p ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Evaluation of in-hospital management for febrile illness in Northern Tanzania before and after 2010 World Health Organization Guidelines for the treatment of malaria.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2014 OBJECTIVE: In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) published updated guidelines emphasizing and expanding recommendations for a parasitological confirmation of malaria before treating with antimalarials. This study aimed to assess differences in histo ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Brucellosis in low-income and middle-income countries.

Journal Article Curr Opin Infect Dis · October 2013 PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Human brucellosis is a neglected, underrecognized infection of widespread geographic distribution. It causes acute febrile illness and a potentially debilitating chronic infection in humans, and livestock infection has substantial socioe ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Pericarditis mediated by respiratory syncytial virus in a hematopoietic stem cell transplant patient.

Journal Article Transpl Infect Dis · August 2013 We describe a case of pericarditis and large pericardial effusion in a 63-year-old African-American man undergoing autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant for multiple myeloma. Pericardial tissue biopsy demonstrated fibrinous pericarditis, and immuno ... Full text Link to item Cite

Plasma Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein-2 concentrations are associated with malaria severity and mortality in Tanzanian children.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2012 Plasma Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein-2 (PfHRP-2) concentrations, a measure of parasite biomass, have been correlated with malaria severity in adults, but not yet in children. We measured plasma PfHRP-2 in Tanzanian children with uncomplicate ... Full text Link to item Cite

Increasing incidence of invasive Haemophilus influenzae disease in adults, Utah, USA.

Journal Article Emerg Infect Dis · September 2011 Since the introduction of the Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine, the incidence of invasive H. influenzae type b disease among children has fallen dramatically, but the effect on invasive H. influenzae disease among adults may be more complex. In this p ... Full text Link to item Cite