Malaria remains a major health problem in the world. It is a neglected disease because it occurs almost exclusively in poor developing countries, which offer negligible marketable and profitable opportunities. Malaria...Malaria remains a major health problem in the world. It is a neglected disease because it occurs almost exclusively in poor developing countries, which offer negligible marketable and profitable opportunities. Malaria(together with Tuberculosis), is responsible for an unprecedented global health crisis with devastating effects in developing countries. The 2011 Word Malaria Report indicated that 106 countries showed endemic malaria. Malaria control depends mainly on drug treatment, which is increasingly difficult due to the spread of drug resistant parasites and requires expensive drug combinations. Part of the inability to combat this disease is attributed to an incomplete understanding of its pathogenesis and pathophysiology. Improving the knowledge of the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of malaria transmission and of the exclusive metabolic pathways of the parasites(protozoa of the genus Plasmodium), should promote efficient treatment of disease and help the identification of novel targets for potential therapeutic interventions. Moreover, the elucidation of determinants involved in the spread of malaria will provide important information for efficient planning of strategies for targeted control.展开更多
Background:The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of coinfection with malaria and intestinal parasites,as well as to determine its association with anaemia in children aged 10 years and below in Muy...Background:The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of coinfection with malaria and intestinal parasites,as well as to determine its association with anaemia in children aged 10 years and below in Muyuka,Cameroon.Materials and methods:This was a cross-sectional study.Participants were febrile children who were admitted to the Muyuka district hospital between April and October 2012.Blood and stool samples were collected from those participants who gave consent to take part in the study.Haemoglobin concentration(Hb)and complete blood count(CBC)were performed using an automated haematology analyser(Mindray®,BC-2800).Giemsa-stained blood film was examined to detect malaria parasites,while the formol-ether concentration technique was used to detect intestinal parasitic infections(IPIs).The Pearson’s chi-square,Student’s T-test and correlation analysis were all performed as part of the statistical analyses.Results:Four hundred and eleven(411)children successfully took part in this study.The prevalence of malaria,IPIs,malaria and IPI coinfection,and anaemia observed were 98.5%,11.9%,11.9%and 44.8%,respectively.Anaemia and IPIs were significantly associated with age;anaemia was more prevalent in children under five years of age(p=0.000),whereas IPIs were more prevalent in children aged between five and 10 years(p=0.006).The parasite species isolated included Ascaris lumbricoides(36[73.5%]),Entamoeba histolytica/dispar(9[18.4%])and hookworm(4[8.2%]).The mean Hb observed was 10.64 g/dl(±1.82).A significant negative correlation was observed between malaria parasite density and Hb.There was no significant difference in the prevalence of anaemia among children infected with malaria,IPIs,or malaria and IPI coinfection,or among non-infected children.Similarly,the mean Hb did not differ among infected and non-infected children.Conclusion:This study showed that malaria and IPIs still constitute a major public health problem in the study area despite a lack of any significant association between these infect展开更多
Malaria is a severe disease caused by Plasmodium parasites,which can be detected through blood smear images.The early identification of the disease can effectively reduce the severity rate.Deep learning(DL)models can ...Malaria is a severe disease caused by Plasmodium parasites,which can be detected through blood smear images.The early identification of the disease can effectively reduce the severity rate.Deep learning(DL)models can be widely employed to analyze biomedical images,thereby minimizing the misclassification rate.With this objective,this study developed an intelligent deep-transfer-learning-based malaria parasite detection and classification(IDTL-MPDC)model on blood smear images.The proposed IDTL-MPDC technique aims to effectively determine the presence of malarial parasites in blood smear images.In addition,the IDTL-MPDC technique derives median filtering(MF)as a pre-processing step.In addition,a residual neural network(Res2Net)model was employed for the extraction of feature vectors,and its hyperparameters were optimally adjusted using the differential evolution(DE)algorithm.The k-nearest neighbor(KNN)classifier was used to assign appropriate classes to the blood smear images.The optimal selection of Res2Net hyperparameters by the DE model helps achieve enhanced classification outcomes.A wide range of simulation analyses of the IDTL-MPDC technique are carried out using a benchmark dataset,and its performance seems to be highly accurate(95.86%),highly sensitive(95.82%),highly specific(95.98%),with a high F1 score(95.69%),and high precision(95.86%),and it has been proven to be better than the other existing methods.展开更多
文摘Malaria remains a major health problem in the world. It is a neglected disease because it occurs almost exclusively in poor developing countries, which offer negligible marketable and profitable opportunities. Malaria(together with Tuberculosis), is responsible for an unprecedented global health crisis with devastating effects in developing countries. The 2011 Word Malaria Report indicated that 106 countries showed endemic malaria. Malaria control depends mainly on drug treatment, which is increasingly difficult due to the spread of drug resistant parasites and requires expensive drug combinations. Part of the inability to combat this disease is attributed to an incomplete understanding of its pathogenesis and pathophysiology. Improving the knowledge of the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of malaria transmission and of the exclusive metabolic pathways of the parasites(protozoa of the genus Plasmodium), should promote efficient treatment of disease and help the identification of novel targets for potential therapeutic interventions. Moreover, the elucidation of determinants involved in the spread of malaria will provide important information for efficient planning of strategies for targeted control.
文摘Background:The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of coinfection with malaria and intestinal parasites,as well as to determine its association with anaemia in children aged 10 years and below in Muyuka,Cameroon.Materials and methods:This was a cross-sectional study.Participants were febrile children who were admitted to the Muyuka district hospital between April and October 2012.Blood and stool samples were collected from those participants who gave consent to take part in the study.Haemoglobin concentration(Hb)and complete blood count(CBC)were performed using an automated haematology analyser(Mindray®,BC-2800).Giemsa-stained blood film was examined to detect malaria parasites,while the formol-ether concentration technique was used to detect intestinal parasitic infections(IPIs).The Pearson’s chi-square,Student’s T-test and correlation analysis were all performed as part of the statistical analyses.Results:Four hundred and eleven(411)children successfully took part in this study.The prevalence of malaria,IPIs,malaria and IPI coinfection,and anaemia observed were 98.5%,11.9%,11.9%and 44.8%,respectively.Anaemia and IPIs were significantly associated with age;anaemia was more prevalent in children under five years of age(p=0.000),whereas IPIs were more prevalent in children aged between five and 10 years(p=0.006).The parasite species isolated included Ascaris lumbricoides(36[73.5%]),Entamoeba histolytica/dispar(9[18.4%])and hookworm(4[8.2%]).The mean Hb observed was 10.64 g/dl(±1.82).A significant negative correlation was observed between malaria parasite density and Hb.There was no significant difference in the prevalence of anaemia among children infected with malaria,IPIs,or malaria and IPI coinfection,or among non-infected children.Similarly,the mean Hb did not differ among infected and non-infected children.Conclusion:This study showed that malaria and IPIs still constitute a major public health problem in the study area despite a lack of any significant association between these infect
基金The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Majmaah University for funding this study under project number R-2022-76.
文摘Malaria is a severe disease caused by Plasmodium parasites,which can be detected through blood smear images.The early identification of the disease can effectively reduce the severity rate.Deep learning(DL)models can be widely employed to analyze biomedical images,thereby minimizing the misclassification rate.With this objective,this study developed an intelligent deep-transfer-learning-based malaria parasite detection and classification(IDTL-MPDC)model on blood smear images.The proposed IDTL-MPDC technique aims to effectively determine the presence of malarial parasites in blood smear images.In addition,the IDTL-MPDC technique derives median filtering(MF)as a pre-processing step.In addition,a residual neural network(Res2Net)model was employed for the extraction of feature vectors,and its hyperparameters were optimally adjusted using the differential evolution(DE)algorithm.The k-nearest neighbor(KNN)classifier was used to assign appropriate classes to the blood smear images.The optimal selection of Res2Net hyperparameters by the DE model helps achieve enhanced classification outcomes.A wide range of simulation analyses of the IDTL-MPDC technique are carried out using a benchmark dataset,and its performance seems to be highly accurate(95.86%),highly sensitive(95.82%),highly specific(95.98%),with a high F1 score(95.69%),and high precision(95.86%),and it has been proven to be better than the other existing methods.
