A study of various biochemical parameters in patients with scrub typhus

Abstract

Background: Scrub typhus is an infectious disease spreads by a bacterium called Orientiatsutsugamushi. The WHO has dubbed scrub typhus one of the world’s most under-diagnosed/underreported diseases. It’s so also in Rajasthan (India). Since antigen detection tests have low sensitivity/specificity and require biopsy specimens, in the clinical setting, serological assays are the mainstay of diagnosis. Objectives: To study various biochemical parameters in Scrub typhus positive patients and to compare of the same with the control group (negative suspects) to elicit some specific diagnostic parameters through data mining. Materials and Methods: This retrospective observational cohort study included Fever of unknown origin (FUO) cases classified into patients with (group 1; n = 35) or without (group 2; n= 65) scrub typhus. Various biochemical parameters were correlated and compared through data mining and analyzed on Apache Hive. We used Welch test to estimate normality of data, Fligner Killeen test to estimate the homogeneity of variance and Mann Whitney U test for comparing the two data sets. Results: Both the groups were comparable with respect to age and sex. Platelet count, SGOT, SGPT and random blood sugar were significantly different in both the groups. (p 0.05) Conclusions: Thrombocytopenia and deranged SGOT-SGPT were found to be prime clinico-pathological indicator of the scrub typhus. Keywords: Scrub typhus, Data mining, Acute undifferentiated fever, Thrombocytopenia.