Estimating malaria parasite density among pregnant women at central Sudan using actual and assumed white blood cell count

Malaria Journal

Research

Gamal K Adam¹  AbdElrahium D Haggaz²  Ishag Adam³  Leana M Elbashir³  Duria A Rayis³ 

[1] Faculty of Medicine, University of Gadarif, Gadarif, Sudan;Faculty of Medicine, University of Geizera, PO Box 412, Medani, Sudan;Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum, PO Box 102, Khartoum, Sudan;

关键词: Malaria;    Pregnancy;    Diagnosis;    Microscopy;    Sudan;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-13-6

 received in 2013-11-16, accepted in 2014-01-04,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMicroscopic examination using Giemsa-stained thick blood films remains the reference standard for detection of malaria parasites and it is the only method that is widely and practically available for quantifying malaria parasite density. There are few published data (there was no study during pregnancy) investigating the parasite density (ratio of counted parasites within a given number of microscopic fields against counted white blood cells (WBCs) using actual number of WBCs.MethodsParasitaemia was estimated using assumed WBCs (8,000), which was compared to parasitaemia calculated based on each woman’s WBCs in 98 pregnant women with uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria at Medani Maternity Hospital, Central Sudan.ResultsThe geometric mean (SD) of the parasite count was 12,014.6 (9,766.5) and 7,870.8 (19,168.8) ring trophozoites /μl, P <0.001 using the actual and assumed (8,000) WBC count, respectively. The median (range) of the ratio between the two parasitaemias (using assumed/actual WBCs) was 1.5 (0.6-5), i e, parasitaemia calculated assuming WBCs equal to median (range) 1.5 (0.6-5) times higher than parasitaemia calculated using actual WBCs. There were 52 out of 98 patients (53%) with ratio between 0.5 and 1.5. For 21 patients (21%) this ratio was higher than 2, and for five patients (5%) it was higher than 3.ConclusionThe estimated parasite density using actual WBC counts was significantly lower than the parasite density estimated using assumed WBC counts. Therefore, it is recommended to use the patient`s actual WBC count in the estimation of the parasite density.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Haggaz et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.