Authors
A L Reed2; J R Stothard1; C Jewell2; M Stanton1; S A Kayuni1; 1 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK; 2 Lancaster University, UK Discussion
Schistosomiasis is a water-borne disease with school-aged-children (SAC) one of the most vulnerable groups. Intestinal schistosomiasis (IS) and urogenital schistosomiasis (UGS), from Schistosoma mansoni and S. haematobium infection respectively, are now both occurring along the shoreline of Lake Malawi. Local heterogeneities in transmission can occur and frame unmet needs in identification of high-risk or focal areas with heightened disease. A secondary data analysis of epidemiological information collected from SAC in Mangochi District, Lake Malawi was undertaken to assess age-infection profiles. The diagnostic data was converted into a binary response variable and formed a logistic regression with Bernoulli distribution. A generalized additive model was used to allow us to better adjust the smoothness of the predictor function, thereby ignoring the true noisiness of the predictor. The study found there is an increasing prevalence of IS in SAC up to around 11 years before decreasing thereafter. By contrast, no clear age-infection pattern for UGS was found. Peak of infection is expected around adolescence. Further investigation is required to find out why the prevalence peaked around age 11 in our study. In our poster Part B, we explore the age-co-infection trends by school to find out how co-infection affects age-profiling of infection. 
