Dual-frequency bioelectrical phase angle to estimate the platelet count for the prognosis of dengue fever in Indian children

Abstract

A noninvasive investigation to ascertain the platelet (PLT) count was conducted on 44 hospitalized dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) subjects, male and female aged between 3 and 14 years using bioelectrical phase angle (BPhA). Among the 44 subjects, 30 subjects were confirmed to be non-structural protein-1 (NS1) positive at the time of admission, whose blood investigations such as hematocrit (HCT) level, PLT count, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) level and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) level were performed for the classification of risk as low-risk (LR) and high-risk (HR) DHF. It was found that the BPhA of the body reflects a linear correlation with the PLT count. To provide a better and more accurate estimate of PLT, a dual-frequency method is proposed to calculate the phase angle of the total body. The resistance at 5 kHz and reactance at 100 kHz were used to estimate the phase angle of the total body. The statistical analysis identified that the PLT count estimated using the proposed dual-frequency method shows a good correlation with the blood investigation results. In addition, statistical analysis of the proposed method on other fever subjects indicated a significant difference with DHF.