Investigation on the influence of the extracellular fluid to intracellular fluid ratio at dual frequencies for prognosis of dengue fever in Indian children

Abstract

A noninvasive investigation to ascertain the severity of dengue was conducted on 44 hospitalized dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) subjects, male and female aged between 3 and 14 years using bioelectrical impedance analysis. Among the 44 subjects, 30 subjects were confirmed with NS1 positive at the time of admission, whose blood investigations such as haematocrit (HCT), platelet (PLT) count, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) level and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) level was taken for classification of risk under low risk and high risk DHF. For comparison, BIA of 53 healthy controls was also taken. To provide a better and accurate estimate, a dual frequency method is proposed to calculate body fluid volumes such as total body water (TBW), extracellular fluid (ECF) and intracellular fluid (ICF). The impedance at 100 kHz is used to estimate TBW while impedance at 5 kHz to estimate ECF. Statistical analysis identifies that the ratio of ECF/ICF estimated using the proposed dual frequency method, shows significant difference between control and DHF risk groups and also shows good correlation with the blood investigation results. In addition, statistical analysis of proposed ECF/ICF method on other fever subjects indicate significant difference with DHF.