Abstract
BACKGROUND: Podoconiosis is a form of leg swelling, which arises when individuals are exposed over time to red clay soil formed from alkaline volcanic rock. The exact causal agent of the disease is unknown. This study investigates associations between podoconiosis disease data and ground-sampled soil data from North West Cameroon. METHODS: The mineralogy and elemental concentrations were measured in the soil samples and the data were spatially interpolated. Mean soil values were calculated from a 3 km buffer region around the prevalence data points to perform statistical analysis. Analysis included Spearman's rho correlation, binary logistic regression and principal component analysis (PCA). RESULTS: Six elements, barium, beryllium, potassium, rubidium, strontium and thallium, as well as two minerals, potassium feldspar and quartz, were identified as statistically related to podoconiosis. PCA did not show distinct separation between the spatial locations with or without recorded cases of podoconiosis, indicating that other factors such as shoe-wearing behaviour and genetics may significantly influence podoconiosis occurrence and prevalence in North West Cameroon. CONCLUSION: Several soil variables were statistically significantly related to podoconiosis. To further the current study, future investigations will look at the inflammatory pathway response of cells after exposure to these variables.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 937-946 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene |
Volume | 114 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 19 Nov 2020 |
Bibliographical note
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected]Keywords
- Cameroon
- geospatial
- interpolation
- mineral
- podoconiosis
- soil
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Dive into the research topics of 'Linking soils and human health: geospatial analysis of ground-sampled soil data in relation to community-level podoconiosis data in North West Cameroon'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Profiles
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Matthew Brolly
- School of Applied Sciences - Principal Lecturer
- Centre for Earth Observation Science
Person: Academic