This paper reports a longitudinal study, conducted in 1989/90, of 1893 children aged 5 to 14 years in 9 poor urban areas of the city of Salvador (population 2.44 million), capital of Bahia State in northeast Brazil. Stool examinations were performed to measure nematode infection and reinfection 9 months after treatment, and an extensive questionnaire was applied to collect information on each c...

AIM In 2005, the Ghana Health Service mandated malaria and helminths chemoprophylaxis during antenatal care visits. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of malaria and helminth infections and their relationship with adverse birth outcomes (low birth weight, stillbirth, and preterm) following the implementation of these treatments. STUDY DESIGN A quantitative cross-sectional...

OBJECTIVE To describe the patterns of single and multiple helminth infection in school children from Busia District, Kenya. DESIGN A cross-sectional school survey using a randomly selected sample, forming part of an evaluation study of an ongoing deworming project. SETTING Budalangi and Funyula divisions of Busia District, Western Province, Kenya. SUBJECTS One thousand seven hundred and t...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the aetiology of multiple ecchymoses associated with eosinophilia. SETTING Professorial Paediatric Unit (PPU) at Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH) for children, Colombo. DESIGN Prospective study from July 1998 to April 2000. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients admitted to the PPU with multiple ecchymoses associated with an absolute eosinophilia (> 1 x 10(9)/1) were investig...

This study aimed to investigate the frequency of geohelminthic contamination of public parks and squares in Curitiba, state of Paraná, Brazil, between August and December 2010. A total of 345 samples were collected from 69 sandboxes in different areas and were tested using the Faust, Lutz and Baermann parasitological techniques. Potential risk factors associated with soil contamination were als...

In this week’s PLOS Medicine, Ric Price and colleagues compare the burden of anemia in different plasmodia species in a robust hospital-based surveillance study in Eastern Indonesia [1]. The risks of severe anemia associated with non-falciparum and mixed species infections are characterized and compared to no malaria infection and monoinfection with Plasmodium falciparum. While the study is obs...

A double-blind, placebo-controlled, treatment trial was conducted in Sichuan, China to investigate the unique and combined effects on the cognitive function (working memory) of children after treating geohelminth infections with albendazole and treating Schistosoma japonicum infection with praziquantel. One hundred eighty-one children 5-16 years of age participated. At baseline, the praziquante...

A longitudinal study of 298 rural Bangladeshi infants found evidence of growth faltering starting at 3 months of age. Anthropometric status declined substantially in the first 2 years of life, with weight-for-height (WHZ) falling from - 0.49 to - 1.75, weight-for-age (WAZ) from - 1.18 to - 2.87 and height-for-age (HAZ) from - 1.00 to - 1.88. Higher concentrations of the acute-phase protein alph...