Background: Some clinical studies regarding diagnosis for influenza were carried out by primary care physicians and published only in Japanese. Medical settings in Japan tend to have higher rates of adopting rapid influenza diagnostic tests (RIDTs) for suspicious influenza-like illness in outpatients. Only a few, however, were included in the review, because most of authors did not search the Ichushi-Web database of the Japan Medical Abstracts Society (JMAS).
Objectives: We examine whether results from the existing reviews may be influenced by those of the Ichushi-Web, when articles did not appear in PubMed.
Methods: Using the literature search strategy in the review by Chartrand 2012, we searched for Japanese and English studies on the Ichushi-web between 2000 and March 2015. We extracted outcomes regarding RIDTs accuracy and assessed risk of bias.
Results: From the Ichushi-Web, four studies written in Japanese matched the inclusion criteria for RIDTs accuracy for adults and children. These are shown in Table 1.
Conclusions: JMAS was established in 1903, and more recently launched Ichushi-Web, which was an exhaustive collection of Japanese biomedical literature for the previous 110 years. The number of citations in the database increases by more than 300,000 per year and now exceeds nine million citations. Results of the RIDTs accuracy review might be influenced by Japanese studies, as four studies seemed to be eligible for the RIDTs accuracy review. Adding a search of a Japanese literature retrieval database might be recommended, especially for certain topics considered in Japanese research studies.