Diagnostic performance of the WHO definition of probable dengue within the first 5 days of symptoms on Reunion Island

Abstract

The relevance of the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria for defining probable dengue had not yet been evaluated in the context of dengue endemicity on Reunion Island. The objective of this retrospective diagnostic study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the 2009 WHO definition of probable dengue and to propose an improvement thereof. From the medical database, we retrieved the data of subjects admitted to the emergency department of the University Hospital of Reunion Island in 2019 with suspected dengue fever (DF) within a maximum of 5 days post symptom onset, and whose diagnosis was confirmed by a Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR). The intrinsic characteristics of probable dengue definitions were reported in terms of sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios (LR+ and LR-), using RT-PCR as the gold standard. Of the 1,181 subjects who exhibited a positive RT-PCR, 652 (55%) were classified as probable dengue. The WHO definition of probable dengue yielded a sensitivity of 64% (95%CI 60–67%), a specificity of 57% (95%CI 52–61%), a LR+ of 1.49 (95%CI 1.33–1.67), and a LR- of 0.63 (95%CI 0.56–0.72). The sensitivity and LR- for diagnosing and ruling out probable dengue could be improved by the addition of lymphopenia on admission (74% [95%CI: 71–78%] and 0.54 [95%CI: 0.46–0.63] respectively), at the cost of slight reductions of specificity and LR+ (48% [95%CI: 44–53%] and 1.42 [95%CI: 1.29–1.57], respectively). In the absence of, or when rapid diagnostic testing is unreliable, the use of the improved 2009 WHO definition of probable dengue could facilitate the identification of subjects who require further RT-PCR testing, which should encourage the development of patient management, while also optimizing the count and quarantine of cases, and guiding disease control.