Linking soils and human health: geospatial analysis of ground-sampled soil data in relation to community-level podoconiosis data in North West Cameroon.

Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
H GislamJennifer S Le Blond

Abstract

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. 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). 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. Several soil variables were statistically significantly related to podoconiosis. To further the...Continue Reading

References

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
x-ray diffraction
PCA

Software Mentioned

OK
ArcGIS

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