Will Nigerians Win the War Against Urinary Schistosomiasis? Prevalence, Intensity, Risk Factors and Knowledge Assessment among Some Rural Communities in Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Urinary schistosomiasis is a devastating parasitic disease in Nigeria. This study was carried out to investigate the current prevalence, intensity, risk factors and knowledge assessment among some rural communities in southwestern Nigeria. A cross-sectional study was carried out in which a standard urine filtrations technique was used to determine the prevalence and intensity of infection. A well-designed questionnaire was used to collect subject’s data on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Of the total 620 urine samples examined, overall 346 (55.81%) were positive with a mean egg intensity (S.D) of 65.60 (59.33) egg/10 mL of urine. Significant differences occurred in the analysis. Males had the highest prevalence and intensity of 224 (61.9%) and 69.20 egg/10 mL of urine, respectively. The 10–14 years age group had the highest prevalence of 65.9% while mean intensity of infection among the age group decreases with increasing age, with the highest mean intensity of infection (80.14 egg/10 mL) recorded among the age group ≤ 4 years. Bivariate logistic regression analysis showed that being age group 10–14 (COR 0.27, 95% CI: 0.09–0.79) and dependent on river (COR 0.67, 95% CI: 0.33–1.33) increased the odd of contracting an infection. Similarly, the knowledge of respondents on urinary schistosomiasis was low. Conclusively, urinary schistosomiasis is still persistent at a very high rate in the study area and appropriate control measure should be deployed.

Prevalence of urogenital and intestinal schistosomiasis among school children in South-west Nigeria

“…These communities depend on the dam for their domestic water supply, fishing, and other water-related activities. There have been previous reports of schistosome endemicity in these communities [25].…”

“…The sample size was obtained using the formula for a cross-sectional study [26]. Using a prior prevalence of 37.5% among school children positive for schistosomiasis [25],a marginal error of 5%, and a type 1 error of 5%, a minimum sample of 289 school children was needed.…”

Gender-related differences in prevalence, intensity and associated risk factors of Schistosoma infections in Africa: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…S2 Table provides the overall quality score for each study included in the review. Only 33 (around 25%) of the included studies met the threshold for high quality with eight studies obtaining the highest scores of 9/9 [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. 85 studies were found to be of moderate quality.…”

“…This was attributed to snail abundance in temporary water bodies in both studies. Amongst the studies that report a significantly higher prevalence of infection in males, 16 studies [22,38,40,41,43,50,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64], attribute this difference to gender-specific water-contact activities in which males tend to have more frequent water contact either because of cultural or religious beliefs, occupational reasons, or social roles.…”

Urinary Schistosomiasis and Asymptomatic Bacteriuria among Individuals of Ipogun, Nigeria: Detection of Predominant Microorganisms Antibiotics Susceptibility and Profile.

“…The name is derived from haematuria (bloody urine), which serves as the classical sign of the disease (Atalabi & Adubi, 2018). For decades, urinary schistosomiasis has ravaged Nigerian communities, parasitizing local dwellers and inflicting severe morbidity and disabilities among affected populations (Awosolu et al, 2020). Being an infectious disease of poverty, it disproportionately afflicts poor and marginalized communities, predisposing the affected population to a greater risk of human immune virus (HIV) and cancer, prolonging the course of enterobacterial infections and eliciting antimicrobial resistance (Awosolu et al, 2020;Mohamed et al, 2019;Wall et al, 2019;Hsiao et al, 2016).…”