BackgroundRespiratory illnesses have been identified as a significant factor leading to lost training time and morbidity among Singapore military recruits. A surveillance programme has been put in place to determine etiological agents responsible for febrile, as well as afebrile respiratory illnesses in a military camp. The goal of the study is to better understand the epidemiology of these diseases and identify potential countermeasures to protect military recruits against them.MethodsFrom Jan 2016 - Jan 2017, a total of 2647 respiratory cases were enrolled into the surveillance programme. The cases were further stratified into Febrile Respiratory Illness (FRI, with body temperature > 37.5 °C) or Acute Respiratory Illness (ARI, with body temperature < 37.5 °C). Nasal washes were collected and tested by multiplex PCR to detect 26 different pathogens.ResultsOne thousand ninety five cases (41% of total cases) met the criteria of FRI in which 932 cases (85% of FRI cases) were screened positive for at least one virus. The most common etiological agents for FRI mono-infection cases were Adenovirus E and Rhinovirus. Recruits infected with H3N2 influenza, Influenza B and Adenovirus E viruses were most likely presented as FRI cases. Notably, H3N2 influenza resulted in the greatest rise in body temperature. The remaining 1552 cases (59% of total cases) met the criteria of ARI in which 1198 cases (77% of ARI cases) were screened positive for at least one virus. The most common etiological agent for ARI mono-infection was Rhinovirus. The distribution pattern for dual infections was different for ARI and FRI cases. Maximum number of pathogens detected in a sample was five for both groups.ConclusionPrevious studies on respiratory diseases in military focused largely on FRI cases. With the expanded surveillance to ARI cases, this study allows unbiased evaluation of the impact of respiratory disease pathogens among recruits in a military environment. The results show that several pathogens have a much bigger role in causing respiratory diseases in this cohort.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12879-018-3040-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background: Human coronaviruses (HCoVs) are common etiological agents of acute respiratory tract infections. However their prevalence and clinical presentations are less well studied.Methods: Here in Singapore, we conducted acute respiratory infection surveillance in selected military camps to investigate the epidemiology of such infections and pathogens involved. Nasal washes were done for patients that meet the case criteria along with a survey questionaire. Nucleic acids were then extracted from the nasal washes and subjected to molecular testing for presence of various pathogens, including human coronaviruses.Results: The results presented will focus on the four human coronaviruses 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43 detected over a 2 ½ year period of surveillance.Conclusion: The epidemiology of the four human coronaviruses 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43 over the 2 ½ year period and how they compare with that of other published studies will be discussed. http://dx.

SUMMARYA cross‐sectional study was conducted on 160 Malaysian patients to validate the usefulness of the Siriraj Stroke Score (SSS) for differentiating intracerebral haemorrhage and infarction following acute strokes. Our results indicate that the score lacks sensitivity and specificity. It should thus not be used in epidemiological studies to determine stroke types in a community. More importantly, in the absence of information from neuroimaging of the brain, it cannot be used safely by physicians to assess the need or otherwise of thrombolytic and/or anticoagulant therapy after an acute stroke.