Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jun 13;9(6):468.
doi: 10.3390/pathogens9060468.

The Global Prevalence of Strongyloides stercoralis Infection

Dora Buonfrate  1 , Donal Bisanzio  2   3 , Giovanni Giorli  4 , Peter Odermatt  5   6 , Thomas Fürst  5   6 , Christina Greenaway  7 , Michael French  2 , Richard Reithinger  2 , Federico Gobbi  1 , Antonio Montresor  8 , Zeno Bisoffi  1   9
Affiliations

The Global Prevalence of Strongyloides stercoralis Infection

Dora Buonfrate et al. Pathogens. .

Abstract

Strongyloidiasis is a common neglected tropical disease in tropical and sub-tropical climatic zones. At the worldwide level, there is high uncertainty about the strongyloidiasis burden. This uncertainty represents an important knowledge gap since it affects the planning of interventions to reduce the burden of strongyloidiasis in endemic countries. This study aimed to estimate the global strongyloidiasis prevalence. A literature review was performed to obtain prevalence data from endemic countries at a worldwide level from 1990 to 2016. For each study, the true population prevalence was calculated by accounting for the specificity and the sensitivity of testing and age of tested individuals. Prediction of strongyloidiasis prevalence for each country was performed using a spatiotemporal statistical modeling approach. The country prevalence obtained from the model was used to estimate the number of infected people per country. We estimate the global prevalence of strongyloidiasis in 2017 to be 8.1% (95% CI: 4.2-12.4%), corresponding to 613.9 (95% CI: 313.1-910.1) million people infected. The South-East Asia, African, and Western Pacific Regions accounted for 76.1% of the global infections. Our results could be used to identify those countries in which strongyloidiasis prevalence is highest and where mass drug administration (MDA) should be deployed for its prevention and control.

Keywords: epidemiology; prevalence; strongyloides; strongyloidiasis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart describing the review process.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Year of survey reported in the research publications included in the literature review by country. In the Y-axis, country codes are reported according to ISO 3 (legend available in Table S2).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Estimated strongyloidiasis prevalence (STG-PR) for 2017, as predicted by the best statistical model.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Boxplot of strongyloidiasis prevalence (STG-PR) in adults (≥15 years of age) and children. The prevalence showed in the graph was adjusted by test accuracy.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bethony J., Brooker S., Albonico M., Geiger S.M., Loukas A., Diemert D.J., Hotez P.J. Soil-transmitted helminth infections: Ascariasis, trichuriasis, and hookworm. Lancet. 2006;367:1521–1532. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68653-4. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bisoffi Z., Buonfrate D., Montresor A., Requena-Méndez A., Muñoz J., Krolewiecki A.J., Gotuzzo E., Mena M.A., Chiodini P., Anselmi M., et al. Strongyloides stercoralis: A plea for action. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 2013;7:e2214. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0002214. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Buonfrate D., Formenti F., Perandin F., Bisoffi Z. Novel approaches to the diagnosis of Strongyloides stercoralis infection. Clin. Microbiol. Infect. 2015;21:543–552. doi: 10.1016/j.cmi.2015.04.001. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Buonfrate D., Requena-Méndez A., Angheben A., Cinquini M., Cruciani M., Fittipaldo A.V., Giorli G., Gobbi F., Piubelli C., Bisoffi Z. Accuracy of molecular biology techniques for the diagnosis of Strongyloides stercoralis infection—A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 2018;12:e0006229. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0006229. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fleitas P., Travacio M., Martí-Soler H., Socías M.E., Lopez W.R., Krolewiecki A.J. The Strongyloides stercoralis-hookworms association as a path to the estimation of the global burden of strongyloidiasis: A systematic review. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 2020;14:e0008184. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0008184. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources