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Disease severity determines health-seeking behaviour amongst individuals with influenza-like illness in an internet-based cohort

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Infectious Diseases, March 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (83rd percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (81st percentile)

Mentioned by

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1 news outlet
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5 X users

Citations

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38 Dimensions

Readers on

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88 Mendeley
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Title
Disease severity determines health-seeking behaviour amongst individuals with influenza-like illness in an internet-based cohort
Published in
BMC Infectious Diseases, March 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12879-017-2337-5
Pubmed ID
Authors

Maria Peppa, W. John Edmunds, Sebastian Funk

Abstract

Seasonal influenza epidemics place considerable strain on health services. Robust systems of surveillance are therefore required to ensure preparedness. Sentinel surveillance does not accurately capture the community burden of epidemics as it misses cases that do not present to health services. In this study, Flusurvey (an internet-based community surveillance tool) was used to examine how severity of disease influences health-seeking behaviour in the UK. Logistic regression with random effects was used to investigate the association between health-seeking and symptom severity, duration of illness and reduction in self-reported health-score over four flu seasons between 2011 and 2015. The majority of individuals did not seek care. In general, there was very strong evidence for an association between all severity indicators and visiting a health service (p < 0.0001). Being female (OR 1.62, 95% CI 1.23-2.14, p = 0.0003) and a self-diagnosis of the flu (OR 3.39, 95% CI 2.38-4.83, p < 0.0001) were also associated with increased likelihood of visiting a health service. During the 2012-13 and 2014-15 flu seasons, there was a significantly larger proportion of individuals with more severe sets of symptoms and a longer duration of illness. Despite this, the proportion of individuals with particular sets of symptoms visiting a health service showed only very slight variation across years. Traditional surveillance systems capture only the more severe episodes of illness. However, in spite of variation in flu activity, the proportion of individuals visiting a health service remains relatively stable within specific sets of symptoms across years. These data could be used in combination with data on consultation rates to provide better estimates of community burden.

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X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 5 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 88 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 88 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 15 17%
Student > Master 14 16%
Student > Ph. D. Student 10 11%
Researcher 7 8%
Student > Doctoral Student 5 6%
Other 8 9%
Unknown 29 33%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 16 18%
Nursing and Health Professions 9 10%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 5 6%
Psychology 5 6%
Business, Management and Accounting 4 5%
Other 19 22%
Unknown 30 34%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 12. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 April 2017.
All research outputs
#2,625,536
of 22,962,258 outputs
Outputs from BMC Infectious Diseases
#798
of 7,707 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#50,737
of 309,402 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Infectious Diseases
#29
of 170 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,962,258 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 88th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,707 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 309,402 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 170 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.