High parasitaemia correlates with malaria episodes and the socioeconomic impact of recurrent malaria infection in high-transmission zone of Nigeria

Abstract

Prevalence and intensity of infection in this study were high, 56.6% of 572 study participants were infected with average parasite counts of 3022.25 ± 1001.51per µl of blood (Table 1) and the majority of heavy infection was due to Plasmodium falciparum (Fig. 2B). The heavily infected participants were among the younger age group particularly ≤ 20 years and transmission of infection decreases with increasing age. Although males have a significantly higher intensity of 3148.32 (95%CI 2930.64–3691.39) than females, the difference in prevalence with regard to sex is insignificant (Male vs Female: 53.3% vs. 57.8%, respectively) Table 1. The pattern of infection with respect to parasitaemia showed that heavy infection was often found among youngest and adult individuals while participants within the age group of 21–40 years suffered from light/moderate infection (Fig. 2A). Morphological identification of species showed largely that P. falciparum is the most prevalent and associated with high intensity. However, we found few cases of mixed infection of P. falciparum and vivax: 8.3% and 5.01% among lightly and heavily infected participants, respectively, whereas 9.2% of overall prevalence are associated with P. vivax alone