ABSTRACT

Leptospirosis is an emerging, infectious zoonotic disease caused by pathogenic leptospires. Despite its global importance, leptospirosis remains endemic in tropical and sub-tropical regions. This study intended to explore the seroprevalence of leptospirosis in suspected patients with febrile illness in Tiruchirappalli district, Tamil Nadu, India and also evaluate the rate of seroprevalence in febrile cases with high serum Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) profile. The sera samples (253) of study population were tested by MAT assay and IgM ELISA. Among the 104 leptospirosis suspected cases, 68 patients showed the seropositivity with 65.3% of seroprevalence. Co-infection of leptospirosis was observed in 6 patients with Typhoid and one with Dengue. Out of these 74 patients, predominance in males (n=48) was observed when compared to females (n=26). A higher number of male (n=22) and female (n=13) patients was found to be in the range of age 31-40 years. The predominant clinical features observed in leptospirosis patients are fever, myalgia, chills/rigor, abdominal pain, oliguria, jaundice, breathlessness and hepatomegaly. The highly prevalent serovars are Australis (41.8%), Autumnalis (24.3%). The range of MAT titres is 1:80 and 1:2560. The leptospirosis suspected febrile cases with high MIF profile in the ranges of 16-30ng/mL and 2.6-15ng/mL showed the significantly higher seroprevalence (61.7%), whereas the patients with low range of MIF (0- 2.5ng/mL) showed the low prevalence (2.9%). Altogether, leptospirosis remains the significantly high prevalence in Tiruchirappalli especially in patients with high level of serum MIF. Keywords: Leptospirosis, seroprevalence, Microscopic agglutination test, co-infection, prevalent serovars, clinical manifestations
Publication date: 01/02/2022

https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2022/February/MS_IJBPAS_2022_5860.pdf

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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2022/11.2.5860