{"doi":"10.1038/s41433-024-03009-0","title":"Clinical characteristics and aetiology of uveitis in a viral haemorrhagic fever zone","abstract":"BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Studies on uveitis in Sierra Leone were conducted prior to the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic of 2013-16, which was associated with uveitis in 20% of survivors. They did not include imaging or investigation of tuberculosis and used laboratory services outside the country. We performed a cross-sectional study on patients presenting with uveitis to establish their clinical characteristics and identify the impact of in-country laboratory diagnoses. METHODS: We invited uveitis cases presenting to Eye Clinics in Sierra Leone from March to September 2022 to participate in the study. They underwent a diagnostic work-up, including fundus and ocular coherence tomography imaging. Active uveitis cases underwent further investigations including serology and immunological tests for syphilis, tuberculosis, herpetic viruses and HIV and chest radiographs. RESULTS: We recruited 128 patients. The median age was 34 (IQR 19) years and there was an equal gender split. Panuveitis was the predominant anatomical uveitis type (n = 51, 40%), followed by posterior uveitis (n = 36, 28%). Bilateral disease affected 40 patients (31%). Active uveitis was identified in 75 (59%) cases. ICD 11 definition of blindness with VA < 3/60 occurred in 55 (33%) uveitis eyes. Aetiology of uveitis from clinical and laboratory assessment demonstrated that most cases were of undifferentiated aetiology (n = 66, 52%), followed by toxoplasmosis (n = 46, 36%). Trauma contributed to eight (6%) cases, syphilis to 5 (4%) cases and Ebola to 2 (2%). CONCLUSIONS: Uveitis was associated with high levels of visual impairment. Posterior and panuveitis contributed to the highest proportion of uveitis cases. Laboratory studies helped differentiate syphilis as a significant aetiology of uveitis.","journal":"Eye","year":2024,"id":475744,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9557,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":942051,"name":"Lloyd Harrison-Williams","orcid":"0000-0002-0556-6607","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1308012,"name":"Jalikatu Mustapha","orcid":"0000-0003-3260-5170","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":658038,"name":"Zikan Koroma","orcid":"0000-0002-4512-8038","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1313069,"name":"Alicious Kamara","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1313070,"name":"Bangi Saradugu","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1313071,"name":"Osman Conteh","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1313072,"name":"Theophilus Kanu","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1313073,"name":"Santigie Kamara","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1313074,"name":"Sheku Alhaji Koroma","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":360926,"name":"Matthew Jusu Vandy","orcid":"0000-0002-8612-5845","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":330186,"name":"Laura Ward","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1312702,"name":"Huachun Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-8655-4826","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":964261,"name":"Tolulope Fashina","orcid":"0000-0001-9024-9202","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":360927,"name":"Jessica G. Shantha","orcid":"0000-0002-4449-8598","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250800,"name":"Steven Yeh","orcid":"0000-0002-5417-7771","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1312703,"name":"Alasdair Kennedy","orcid":"0000-0002-9888-2878","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1312701,"name":"Shiama Balendra","orcid":"0000-0002-5302-9814","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":27,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:06:21.071690Z","pmid":"38750125","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}