Post by The Lancet Infectious Diseases

🔥The Lancet Infectious Diseases’ April 2026 Issue is live now! 📢 This month’s issue features a modelling study by Ying Zhang and colleagues evaluating the performance and cost-effectiveness of three rapid diagnostic test (RDT)-based algorithms: (1) a treponemal-only RDT (T–RDT); (2) a standard treponemal/non-treponemal RDT (T/NT–RDT); and (3) a modified T/NT–RDT across varying levels of syphilis prevalence in pregnant women and men who have sex with men (MSM). An open-source decision-analytical model was used to compare the algorithms. Primary outcomes were the number of missed and overtreated cases and the cost per person tested and treated for cohorts of 100 000 people. 📊 No single algorithm was optimal across all settings, although the T–RDT algorithm was the most cost-saving. In pregnant women, the modified T/NT–RDT algorithm missed fewer active cases than the T–RDT algorithm, even in low-prevalence settings, but led to more overtreatment. In MSM, the modified T/NT–RDT algorithm had the strongest diagnostic performance across all prevalence scenarios whereas the standard T/NT–RDT resulted in the fewest cases of overtreatment. T–RDTs may be suitable for antenatal screening, whereas standard or modified T/NT–RDT might be preferable for high-risk populations such as MSM. 💡 Syphilis remains a global public health concern, and challenges with treatment access/low coverage make best practice important. This study highlights the need for flexible, context-specific syphilis testing algorithms that reflect population risk, local epidemiology, and health-system capacity. Also in this month’s issue: 🔹EDITORIAL: GoGoVax dispels hopes for gonorrhoea vaccination 🔹 Global burden of lower respiratory infections and aetiologies, 1990–2023: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023 🔹 Safety and immunogenicity of a live-attenuated chikungunya virus vaccine in adolescents: final results from a 12-month, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial in endemic areas of Brazil 🔹 A systematic review on autoantibodies in long-COVID 🔹 A review on the Core Outcome Measurement Set for Clinical Trials in Dengue: An International Delphi Consensus Study ‘DEN-CORE’ 🔗Read more exciting content in the present issue here: https://bit.ly/4bBMRZ2 🖼️Cover of The Lancet Infectious Diseases’ April 2026 issue by Daria Lada-article featured above #RSVpre-F, #vaccine, # Global Burden of Disease Study, #lower respiratory tract infections, #chikungunya, #Mycoplasma pneumoniae, #Japanese encephalitis virus, #congenital cytomegalovirus, #screening, #syphilis, #rapid diagnostic tests, #long COVID, #dengue, #outcomes, #zoonotic diseases, #LMICs, #Streptococcal necrotising myositis, #bullous haemorrhagic cellulilitis Hmwe Kyu, Kimberly Marsh, Anaïs Chosidow, Dana G Wolf, Henrik Salje, Mariana Perez Duque, Vera Buerge, Sylvia Mink, Daniel Munblit, Katherine E L Worsley-Tonks, Justin Conrad Rosen Wormald, Irene Rivera-Ruiz