Seroprevalence of Cysticercus Antibodies in Japanese Encephalitis Patients in Upper Assam, India: A Hospital Based Study.

INTRODUCTION: Co-infection of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Cysticercosis is attributed mainly to the common epidemiological features between the two diseases. Not much is known about the clinical implications of one infection over the other.

AIM: The study aimed at establishing whether JE-Cysticercosis co-infection is prevalent in the Upper Assam districts and to explore additional details about such co-infections both clinically and epidemiologically.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study was a retrospective cross-sectional hospital based study conducted between July 2013 and June 2014 and included 272 Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) patients. Out of this, 137 JE positive and 135 non-JE Acute encephalitis patients were taken as cases and controls respectively. The diagnosis of JE and Cysticercosis was established by ELISA.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: EpiInfo ver. 7 was used for statistical analysis. Chi-square was used and p-value < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.

RESULTS: The association of Cysticercosis with JE was found to be statistically significant (14.6%, p = 0.0019) in the cases with reference to the controls (3.7%). Moreover, the co-infections were found to be more common in case of adults (19.32%, p = 0.0360); with males having a greater odds (5.25, p = 0.0008) of harbouring the parasite as compared to females.

CONCLUSION: The study proves that the association of Cysticercosis and JE holds true in this region.