Refining early detection of Marburg Virus Disease (MVD) in Rwanda: Leveraging predictive symptom clusters to enhance case definitions
International Journal of Infectious Diseases·
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.ijid.2025.107902
- PMID
- 40187635
- PMCID
- PMC12149021
- OpenAlex
- W4409189610
- Study type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The article argues that symptom-based approaches may support earlier recognition and suggests implications for public health messaging and healthcare worker training. It also notes possible value for surveillance in resource-limited settings.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The study asked whether symptom patterns from Rwanda’s 2024 Marburg virus disease outbreak could be used to improve early case definitions and detection.
Study design
This was a retrospective analysis of suspected Marburg virus disease cases using logistic regression models with L1/L2 regularization and 5-fold cross-validation. Model performance was evaluated with ROC analysis and standard accuracy measures.
Population and setting
The analysis included 6,613 suspected Marburg virus disease cases reported in Rwanda between September 27 and December 20, 2024. Of these, 66 were positive and 6,547 were negative.
Main findings
Fever, fatigue, and headache were the most common early symptoms, while hemorrhagic signs were uncommon. The model identified fever, fatigue, nausea or vomiting, joint pain, and sore throat as the strongest predictors, with reported accuracy of 99.04% and AUC of 0.824. The abstract states that early constitutional and gastrointestinal symptom clusters performed better than hemorrhagic signs for detection.
Public-health relevance
The article argues that symptom-based approaches may support earlier recognition and suggests implications for public health messaging and healthcare worker training. It also notes possible value for surveillance in resource-limited settings.
Important limitations
No explicit study limitations are stated in the supplied abstract. This summary is limited to the single article abstract and metadata, so the original paper is needed for decision-grade interpretation.
GIDS interpretation
The paper is discoverable in GIDS-relevant themes such as diagnostics, outbreak investigation, and surveillance, and it is indexed to Rwanda and Marburg virus disease. This summary does not treat that indexing as confirmation of any live surveillance signal.
Related GIDS surveillance
Literature context does not validate, explain, or change a surveillance signal. Exact and contextual relationships are shown separately.
Evidence relationships
This article has 10 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.