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Call for Papers - Febrile illness – diagnosing and caring for preventable and treatable infectious causes of fever

Guest Editor:
Adrian Gonzalez Lopez: Editor - BMC Infectious Diseases, Germany

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 30 June 2023


BMC Infectious Diseases is calling for submissions to our Collection on original research articles and systematic reviews characterizing the clinical diagnostic aspects of febrile illness in LMIC settings

Meet the Guest Editors

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Adrian Gonzalez Lopez: Editor - BMC Infectious Diseases, Germany

Adrian joined the BioMed Central family as the Editor of BMC Infectious Diseases in March 2021. Before entering the editorial world, Adrian spent twelve years in basic and clinical research studying lung pathologies commonly present in critically ill patients. From 2016 he worked as Principal Investigator at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, developing his research in Ventilator Induced Lung/Brain Injury. The years spent as a researcher have made Adrian appreciate the value of open access and the importance of working for a science based on quality and ethical standards.

About the collection

Fever is one of the most common symptoms leading to healthcare seeking and hospital admission in lower- and middle-income (LMIC) regions of the globe, including health care settings in sub-Saharan Africa, southern and southeastern Asia, and Central and South America. Many febrile illnesses present with non-specific symptoms and signs, and diagnostic options are often very limited, so that empiric treatment predominates. The current recommendations often result in treatable diseases being left untreated or treated with inappropriate antimicrobials on the one hand, and overtreatment of self-limiting conditions with antimicrobials on the other, with important implications for both patient outcomes and the development of antimicrobial resistance.

Improved diagnosis and treatment of febrile illness matter both for the care of individual patients and for public health goals. There are data gaps in both prevalence and incidence of clinically important infections in febrile patients in much of Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. In addition, antimicrobial use and drivers of treatment decisions are only partially understood. There is a need for information on which to base estimates of burden of disease and to guide therapeutic decisions, development and implementation of diagnostic tools and strategies, design of control measures, and resource allocation. The Febrile Illness Evaluation in a Broad Range of Endemicities study (FIEBRE, https://doi.org/10.17037/PUBS.04652739 ) is one example of current research on this topic.

BMC Infectious Diseases invites manuscripts for this collection, which aims to bring together original research articles and systematic reviews characterizing the clinical diagnostic aspects of febrile illness in LMIC settings. The collection is not open to Case reports.

  1. The incidence of cryptococcosis amongst HIV-negative persons is increasing. Whilst the excellent performance of the CrAg testing in people living with HIV is well described, the diagnostic performance of the C...

    Authors: Catriona Macrae, Jayne Ellis, Suzanne H. Keddie, Jane Falconer, John Bradley, Ruth Keogh, Oliver Baerenbold, Heidi Hopkins and Joseph N. Jarvis
    Citation: BMC Infectious Diseases 2023 23:209
  2. Febrile illnesses are among the most important reasons for medical consultation in sub-Saharan Africa and are frequently treated with antimicrobials due to the unavailability of appropriate diagnostic tools. T...

    Authors: Massa dit Achille Bonko, Ibrahima Karama, Francois Kiemde, Palpouguini Lompo, Zakaria Garba, Sibidou Yougbaré, Petra F. Mens, Halidou Tinto, Marc Christian Tahita and Henk. D. F. H. Schallig
    Citation: BMC Infectious Diseases 2022 22:952
  3. In order to verify the existence of an anthrax outbreak, determine its scope, grasp the epidemiological characteristics and find out the cause of the outbreak and recommend preventive and control measures.

    Authors: Xiaolin Yu, Ming Fang, Shuang Wang, Zhong Li, Lixiao Cheng, Zhaoshan Liu, Dandan Zhang, Dandan Dong and Zengqiang Kou
    Citation: BMC Infectious Diseases 2022 22:875
  4. Plasmodium vivax apical membrane antigen-1 (pvama-1) is an important vaccine candidate against Malaria. The genetic composition assessment of pvama-1 from wide-range geography is vital to plan the antigen based ...

    Authors: Ibrar Ullah, Sahib Gul Afridi, Muhammad Israr, Hizbullah Khan, Sulaiman Shams, Komal Zaib, Huong Giang Le, Jung-Mi Kang, Byoung-Kuk Na and Asifullah Khan
    Citation: BMC Infectious Diseases 2022 22:807
  5. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza viruses are important global causes of morbidity and mortality. We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of the Luminex NxTAG respiratory pathogen panels (RPPs)™ (in...

    Authors: Sophie Jullien, Felicity Fitzgerald, Suzanne Keddie, Oliver Baerenbold, Quique Bassat, John Bradley, Jane Falconer, Colin Fink, Ruth Keogh, Heidi Hopkins and Marie Voice
    Citation: BMC Infectious Diseases 2022 22:785

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of Research Articles. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Febrile illness – diagnosing and caring for preventable and treatable infectious causes of fever" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.