JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

There are gaps in our understanding of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) clinical characteristics and disease burden among community dwelling adults. This is in part due to lack of routine testing at the point-of-care. More data would enhance our assessment of the need for an RSV vaccination programme for adults in the UK.

Objective:

To implement point-of-care-testing (POCT) in primary care to describe the incidence, clinical presentation, risk factors, and economic burden of RSV among adults presenting with acute respiratory infection (ARI).

Methods:

We are recruiting up to 3,600 patients from at least 21 practices across England participating in the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research Surveillance Centre (RSC). Practices are selected if they were undertaking reference virology sampling for the RSC and had prior experience with respiratory illness studies. Any adult, ≥40 years old, presenting with ARI with onset ≤10 days, but without RSV within the past 28 days, will be eligible to participate. We will estimate the incidence proportion of RSV, describe the clinical features, and risk factors of patients with RSV infection, and measure the economic burden of RSV infection.

Results:

Twenty-five practices across different English health administrative regions expressed interested and were recruited to participate. We have created and tested an educational programme to deploy POCT for RSV in primary care. In addition to using the POCT device, we provide suggestions about how to integrate POCT into primary care workflow and templates for high quality data recording of diagnosis, symptoms and signs. In the 2023-2024 winter RSV detection in the sentinel network grew between October and late November. According to data from UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) the peak RSV swab positivity was in International Standards Organisation (ISO) week 48, 2023. Data collection remains ongoing, results from the subset of practices participating in this study are not yet available.

Conclusions:

This study will provide data on the RSV incidence in the community as well as rapid information to inform sentinel surveillance and vaccination programmes. This information could potentially improve clinical decision-making, including regarding the use of antimicrobials and antivirals. Clinical Trial: Not applicable