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Background: Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) is an infectious and debilitating disease that affects millions of people each year. Simple, reliable and cost effective biomarkers are vital to fore-stall the morbidity and mortality that is hallmark of the infection especially in resource poor economy.Methods: This comparative study enlisted 140 subjects: 80 had PTB and 60 do not. Blood of 8mls was collected; 3mls in K2-EDTA for FBC testing with XE-2100 Sysmex and ESR by Westergreen method. The remainder was used for serum CRP assay by ELISA. The radiological extent was determined from Chest X ray report and disease severity using modified Bandim TB scoring was extracted from the case note. The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship and diagnostic utility between leucocyte with CRP, ESR, radiological extent of disease and disease severity in PTB.Results: Mean Lymphocyte count was lower while TWBC, Neutrophil and Monocyte counts were higher in subjects compared to control (p<0.05). Median CRP, ESR, NLR, NMR and MLR were higher in subjects compared to control (p<0.05), NLR and MLR showed strong positive significant correlation with ESR, disease severity, and radiological extend of disease. NMR (p= 0.00) had a negative correlation with ESR (p<0.05) and inverse correlation with disease severity and radiological extent.Conclusions: This study found NLR, MLR and NMR as a readily, easily available and inexpensive indices that are as efficient and comparable to known biomarkers in PTB infection, therefore could serve as valuable predictive biomarker in areas of high disease burden with weak economy.
RESUMEN
Background: Malaria is a mosquito-borne public health problem which alters the blood counts, haptoglobin level and serum lactate dehydrogenase (sLDH) activity of the infected individuals. Some of the alterations are associated risk factors in malaria pathology. This study aims at elucidating changes in blood counts, sLDH activity and haptoglobin level in malaria infected subjects seen in a Tertiary Health Institution in Nnewi, as search for associated risk factors in malaria pathology.Methods: This cross sectional study enrolled 270 age matched subjects between 18-65 years. The test group (200) who tested positive to P. falciparium was placed into two groups based on their parasite counts with cut-off of ≥1000 parasites x 109/L. Group one (100) had counts above the cut-off and group two (100) below. The control (70) was aparasitemic. The demographic data were noted and 4mls of blood drawn. 2mls in K3EDTA was for FBC testing using Mythic 22 hematology analyzer, and remaining dispensed into plain tubes was for sLDH assay by kinetic method and haptoglobin by ELISA technique.Results: The HCT, Hb, RBC and Platelet count of test were progressively significantly lowered (p=0.001) compared to control, with an intra-significant difference among the 3 groups (p<0.05), also the parameters were found to have an inverse significant relationship (p=0.001) to the parasite counts. This trend was also seen with haptoglobin while reverse was the case with LDH activity which rather increased significantly (p = 0.000) at opposite direction as parasite density increases.Conclusions: This study show that the degree of intravascular haemolysis is directly influenced by the parasite density, this portends that high endemicity and perennial parasiteamia in the study area could cause chronic anaemia and thrombocytopenia in the population studied.