NCT04141917
Test-and-treat for Influenza in Homeless Shelters
Ran, enrolled patients, then stopped for a reason unrelated to the science — flagged as possibly worth a second look.
- Phase
- PHASE4
- Enrollment
- 1,618
- Sponsor class
- OTHER
- Taxonomy code
- external_event
What the registry says
“Operational futility (i.e. near zero circulation of influenza in the community during year 2)”
What real verification found
Despite being terminated for "operational futility (near-zero influenza circulation in year 2)," this trial's results were published: Rogers JH, Casto AM, Nwanne G, et al. "Results from a test-and-treat study for influenza among residents of homeless shelters in King County, WA: A stepped-wedge cluster-randomized trial." Influenza Other Respir Viruses. 2023;17(1):e13092. doi:10.1111/irv.13092 (full text PMC9835442). The paper's own termination narrative — "Study Year 2 recommenced on 11/2/20 but was terminated early on 4/1/2021 due to operational futility based on minimal influenza activity in King County, WA" — matches the CT.gov why-stopped field verbatim, confirming it is the results paper for this exact NCT, not a lookalike or a different trial. Using pooled data across the two abbreviated stepped-wedge seasons (1,283 ARI encounters, 668 participants, 51 influenza-positive by RT-PCR), the investigators reported: 86.2% feasibility of on-site rapid testing/treatment; a non-significant effect of test-and-treat on secondary transmission (adjusted RR 1.73, 95% CI 0.50-6.00, p=0.386); and genomic transmission-cluster evidence (86% of flu-A and 81% of flu-B sequences most closely related to another sequence from the same shelter). Notably, ClinicalTrials.gov's own References module for NCT04141917 (queried via the v2 API) does NOT list this Rogers 2023 results paper -- it lists only the 2020 study-protocol paper (Newman et al., Trials, PMID 33228787) plus unrelated background/derived citations -- so a references-module-only check would have false-negatived this into "unanswered." A live WebSearch + WebFetch found it directly.
Full search & fetch trail
WebSearch: "NCT04141917 influenza homeless shelters test and treat University of Washington"; WebSearch: "\"Test-and-treat\" influenza homeless shelters trial results published"; WebFetch on https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9835442/ (confirmed article content, termination language, findings, citation); WebFetch on https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies/NCT04141917 (confirmed whyStopped text and enumerated the 7 references module entries, none of which is the Rogers 2023 results paper).