Biomedical Research

The study examined co-infection between onchocerciasis and malarial infection in Garaha-Dutse, Nigeria. A community based prevalence rate of Onchocerca. volvulus and malarial parasites was carried out among 214 subjects randomly selected in the village. An approval by the State Ministry of Health and Hong Local Government Area was received before the commencement of the study. Physical examination, parasitslogical analysis of peripheral blood samples for malaria parasites and examination of skinsnip for microfilarae of Oncho-cerca volvulus was conducted on the sampled population. Structured interview was also conducted on the subjects for demographic information and to establish any history of fever among them. On the overall 15.8% onchocerciasis and 28.0% plasmodiasis were recorded as single infections while 8.4% concurrent infection was also observed. Statistical analysis showed a significant association between the prevalence of onchocerciasis and malarial infection (P<0.05). Assessing the recovery rates of examination techniques, Microscopic examination recorded prevalence rate of 5.1% for onchocerciasis and 15.9% for plasmodiasis where as synadromic approach gave it as 10.7% and 12.1% respectively. Examining the distribution of the infections by age, progressive increase in prevalence of onchocerciasis was observed as the age increases while plasmodiasis rate did not follow any regular pattern. Statistically, there was no significant difference in the distribution of infec-tions by age (P>0.05) and also by gender (P>0.05) Finally the prevalence of onchocerciasis was highest among the farmers (28.8%), malarial infection the highest among the fishermen (47.7%) while the highest concomitant infection rate was observed (18.2%) among the farmers.

Author(s): S.N. Rebecca, D.O. Akinboye and A.A. Abdulazeez
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