Brucellosis serology as an alternative diagnostic test for patients with malaria-like symptoms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: In a low transmission zone for malaria, we explored the presence of brucellosis as an alternative diagnosis in febrile patients. Specifically, the objective of our study was to determine the proportion of patients presenting to the hospital with malaria-like febrile symptoms that were concurrently brucellosis sero-positive, and assess related risk factors.Methods: The study was done at the rural hospital in Endulen, in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), Tanzania. Hospital patients were enrolled showing malaria-like febrile symptoms and were tested for malaria (microscopy) as well as brucellosis (agglutination test, plus commercial ELISAs for IgM and for IgG). Patient demographic characteristics and risk factors for brucellosis were determined using a questionnaire interview.Results: A total of 159 patients were enrolled, of which 57 were positive for malaria and 58 were positive by ELISA for brucellosis, with 54 (93%) of these brucellosis-positives solely positive for isotype IgG, 1 (1.7%) solely for isotype IgM, and 3 (5.2%) positive for both IgM and IgG. However, the brucellosis agglutination test was only positive in 9 of 159 samples. Co-infections of malaria and brucellosis occurred, but malaria disease status was not significantly correlated with brucellosis status. Patients serologically positive for brucellosis were more likely to have had contact with aborted animal materials (p=0.002).Conclusions: Brucellosis is a potentially missed diagnosis amongst pastoralists in rural Tanzania with malaria-like symptoms. However, concurrent and isotope-specific serology is integral to ensure detection and appropriate clinical management.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".