Using Minimally Invasive Tissue Sampling and Determination of Cause of Death to Establish Etiologies of Community Respiratory Deaths Among Zambian Infants and Children.

ABSTRACT: In low-to-middle-income countries, acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) remains the leading infectious cause of death among infants and children under 5 years old. Case-control studies based on upper respiratory sampling have informed current understandings of ALRI etiologies; in contrast, minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS) offers a method of directly interrogating lower respiratory tract pathogens to establish etiologic distributions. This study performed in the postmortem setting used MITS and a Determination of Cause of Death (DeCoDe) panel to elucidate the causes of fatal pneumonia in the community in Lusaka, Zambia. For deceased infants and children under age 5 years whose next-of-kin provided consent, a verbal autopsy was obtained and 6 lung tissue biopsies from each case

SUBMITTER: Wheelock A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11748213 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature