Chlamydia psittaci (psittacosis) as a cause of community-acquired pneumonia: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Epidemiology and Infection·
- DOI
- 10.1017/s0950268817002060
- PMID
- 28946931
- PMCID
- PMC9148753
- OpenAlex
- W2760594806
- Study type
- Systematic review
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The authors suggest that, for burden-of-disease work, assuming roughly 1% of incident community-acquired pneumonia is attributable to psittacosis is a reasonable working estimate.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The review evaluates the share of community-acquired pneumonia attributable to Chlamydia psittaci infection across published aetiological studies.
Study design
A systematic review and meta-analysis of published community-acquired pneumonia aetiology studies, restricted to reports of at least 100 patients and drawing on MEDLINE and Embase records from 1986 onward.
Population and setting
Patients with community-acquired pneumonia enrolled in aetiological studies published from 1986 onward, summarised across 57 included investigations.
Main findings
Across the included studies, C. psittaci was identified as the causative pathogen in 1.03% of community-acquired pneumonia cases (95% CI 0.79–1.30), with individual study estimates ranging from 0% to 6.7%.
Public-health relevance
The authors suggest that, for burden-of-disease work, assuming roughly 1% of incident community-acquired pneumonia is attributable to psittacosis is a reasonable working estimate.
Important limitations
Source-scope limitation: this summary is based solely on the supplied single-article abstract and bibliographic metadata and does not capture design, quality, or heterogeneity details reported only in the full paper, which are required for decision-grade interpretation.
GIDS interpretation
The paper is discoverable through disease, transmission-dynamics, One Health, and diagnostics classifiers, and offers a pooled quantitative baseline for how often psittacosis appears among community-acquired pneumonia aetiologies; it does not, on its own, indicate 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 8 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.