Accuracy of the WHO praziquantel dose pole for large-scale community treatment of urogenital schistosomiasis in northern Mozambique: Is it time for an update?

Background: A pioneering strategy developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for the control of schistosomiasis was the concept of a height-based dose pole to determine praziquantel (PZQ) dosing in large-scale treatment campaigns. However, some recent studies have shown variable accuracy for the dose pole in terms of predicting correct mg/Kg dosing, particularly for treatment of adults. According to the WHO, 91 million adults in 52 countries are targeted to be treated by 2020.

Urogenital schistosomiasis in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique: baseline findings from the SCORE study.

Background: The results presented here are part of a five-year cluster-randomised intervention trial that was implemented to understand how best to gain and sustain control of schistosomiasis through different preventive chemotherapy strategies. This paper presents baseline data that were collected in ten districts of Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique, before treatment.

Methods: A cross-sectional study of 19,039 individuals was sampled from 144 villages from May to September 2011.

Assessing the benefits of five years of different approaches to treatment of urogenital schistosomiasis: A SCORE project in Northern Mozambique.

Background: In Mozambique, schistosomiasis is highly endemic across the whole country. The Schistosomiasis Consortium for Operational Research and Evaluation (SCORE) coordinates a five-year study that has been implemented in various African countries, including Mozambique. The overall goal of SCORE was to better understand how to best apply preventive chemotherapy with praziquantel (PZQ) for schistosomiasis control by evaluating the impact of alternative treatment approaches.

Protocol and baseline data for a multi-year cohort study of the effects of different mass drug treatment approaches on functional morbidities from schistosomiasis in four African countries.

Background: The Schistosomiasis Consortium for Operational Research and Evaluation (SCORE) focus is on randomized trials of different approaches to mass drug administration (MDA) in endemic countries in Africa. Because their studies provided an opportunity to evaluate the effects of mass treatment on Schistosoma-associated morbidity, nested cohort studies were developed within SCORE's intervention trials to monitor changes in a suite of schistosomiasis disease outcomes. This paper describes the process SCORE used to select markers for prospective monitoring and the baseline prevalence of these morbidities in four parallel cohort studies.

A comparison of two mathematical models of the impact of mass drug administration on the transmission and control of schistosomiasis.

The predictions of two mathematical models describing the transmission dynamics of schistosome infection and the impact of mass drug administration are compared. The models differ in their description of the dynamics of the parasites within the host population and in their representation of the stages of the parasite lifecycle outside of the host. Key parameters are estimated from data collected in northern Mozambique from 2011 to 2015.