Prospective case-control analysis of the aetiologies of acute undifferentiated fever in Vietnam

Le-Viet, Nhiem; Le, Viet-Nho; Chung, Hai; Phan, Duc-Tuan; Phan, Quang-Duong; Cao, Thanh-Van; Abat, Cédric; Raoult, Didier; Parola, Philippe

In the effort to identify clinical predictors of some common causes of AUF that could help clinicians differentiate AUF, we performed multivariate analyses for each cause consisting of infection with a single pathogen (Table S3) . Accordingly, eschar and a high ALT level (>80 IU/L) were associated with scrub typhus, whereas a high AST level (>80 IU/L), a long fever duration (>7 days) and a job as a farmer were associated with nonscrub typhus rickettsial infections. Only splenomegaly was associated with leptospirosis. Haemorrhage, low WBC count (<4 k/µL) and low PLT count (<150 k/ µL) were associated with dengue infection. The presence of cough was associated with influenza, whereas a young age (<30 years) was associated with noninfluenza respiratory viral infection. Although a limited number of cases were included in each logistic regression model, we believe that these results might be useful for local clinicians who care daily for patients with AUF but have limited diagnostic tools to differentiate some common causes of AUF from other causes.