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Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

Antiviral agents for infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever)

Overview of attention for article published in Cochrane database of systematic reviews, December 2016
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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 (93rd percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (69th percentile)

Mentioned by

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1 news outlet
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28 X users
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10 Wikipedia pages

Citations

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54 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
277 Mendeley
Title
Antiviral agents for infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever)
Published in
Cochrane database of systematic reviews, December 2016
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd011487.pub2
Pubmed ID
Authors

Muireann De Paor, Kirsty O'Brien, Tom Fahey, Susan M Smith

Abstract

Infectious mononucleosis (IM) is a clinical syndrome, usually caused by the Epstein Barr virus (EPV), characterised by lymphadenopathy, fever and sore throat. Most cases of symptomatic IM occur in older teenagers or young adults. Usually IM is a benign self-limiting illness and requires only symptomatic treatment. However, occasionally the disease course can be complicated or prolonged and lead to decreased productivity in terms of school or work. Antiviral medications have been used to treat IM, but the use of antivirals for IM is controversial. They may be effective by preventing viral replication which helps to keep the virus inactive. However, there are no guidelines for antivirals in IM. To assess the effects of antiviral therapy for infectious mononucleosis (IM). We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, Issue 3, March 2016), which contains the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) Group's Specialised Register, MEDLINE (1946 to 15 April 2016), Embase (1974 to 15 April 2016), CINAHL (1981 to 15 April 2016), LILACS (1982 to 15 April 2016) and Web of Science (1955 to 15 April 2016). We searched the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform and ClinicalTrials.gov for completed and ongoing trials. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing antivirals versus placebo or no treatment in IM. We included trials of immunocompetent participants of any age or sex with clinical and laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of IM, who had symptoms for up to 14 days. Our primary outcomes were time to clinical recovery and adverse events and side effects of medication. Secondary outcomes included duration of abnormal clinical examination, complications, viral shedding, health-related quality of life, days missing from school or work and economic outcomes. Two review authors independently assessed studies for inclusion, assessed the included studies' risk of bias and extracted data using a customised data extraction sheet. We used the GRADE criteria to rate the quality of the evidence. We pooled heterogeneous data where possible, and presented the results narratively where we could not statistically combine data. We included seven RCTs with a total of 333 participants in our review. Three trials studied hospitalised patients, two trials were conducted in an outpatient setting, while the trial setting was unclear in two studies. Participants' ages ranged from two years to young adults. The type of antiviral, administration route, and treatment duration varied between the trials. The antivirals in the included studies were acyclovir, valomaciclovir and valacyclovir. Follow-up varied from 20 days to six months. The diagnosis of IM was based on clinical symptoms and laboratory parameters.The risk of bias for all included studies was either unclear or high risk of bias. The quality of evidence was graded as very low for all outcomes and so the results should be interpreted with caution. There were statistically significant improvements in the treatment group for two of the 12 outcomes. These improvements may be of limited clinical significance.There was a mean reduction in 'time to clinical recovery as assessed by physician' of five days in the treatment group but with wide confidence intervals (CIs) (95% CI -8.04 to -1.08; two studies, 87 participants). Prospective studies indicate that clinical signs and symptoms may take one month or more to resolve and that fatigue may be persistent in approximately 10% of patients at six-month follow-up, so this may not be a clinically meaningful result.Trial results for the outcome 'adverse events and side effects of medication' were reported narratively in only five studies. In some reports authors were unsure whether an adverse event was related to medication or complication of disease. These results could not be pooled due to the potential for double counting results but overall, the majority of trials reporting this outcome did not find any significant difference between treatment and control groups.There was a mean reduction in 'duration of lymphadenopathy' of nine days (95% CI -11.75 to -6.14, two studies, 61 participants) in favour of the treatment group.In terms of viral shedding, the overall effect from six studies was that viral shedding was suppressed while on antiviral treatment, but this effect was not sustained when treatment stopped.For all other outcomes there was no statistically significant difference between antiviral treatment and control groups. The effectiveness of antiviral agents (acyclovir, valomaciclovir and valacyclovir) in acute IM is uncertain. The quality of the evidence is very low. The majority of included studies were at unclear or high risk of bias and so questions remain about the effectiveness of this intervention. Although two of the 12 outcomes have results that favour treatment over control, the quality of the evidence of these results is very low and may not be clinically meaningful. Alongside the lack of evidence of effectiveness, decision makers need to consider the potential adverse events and possible associated costs, and antiviral resistance. Further research in this area is warranted.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 28 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 277 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Unknown 276 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 42 15%
Student > Bachelor 39 14%
Researcher 19 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 16 6%
Student > Ph. D. Student 14 5%
Other 42 15%
Unknown 105 38%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 77 28%
Nursing and Health Professions 32 12%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 9 3%
Psychology 8 3%
Social Sciences 7 3%
Other 27 10%
Unknown 117 42%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 27. 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 07 March 2024.
All research outputs
#1,462,318
of 25,595,500 outputs
Outputs from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#3,145
of 13,156 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#28,753
of 421,614 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#78
of 256 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,595,500 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 13,156 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 35.8. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% 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 421,614 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 256 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its contemporaries.