School of Nursing and Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal UKZN, George Campbell Building, Howard College Campus, 4001, Durban, South Africa.
BMC Infect Dis. 2022 Mar 18;22(1):264. doi: 10.1186/s12879-022-07260-2.
Schistosomiasis and soil transmitted helminths (STH) have been associated with compromised child development. We determined the effect of schistosomiasis and STH on expressive language skills among isiZulu speaking preschool children focusing on the variables: age, gender, school and stunting.
We quantitatively compared the performance of a cohort of infected and non-infected children using a 2 phased approach. In phase 1 infected children were treated with praziquantel and matched with non-infected children and both groups were tested for expressive language performance. In phase 2 both groups of children were re-tested for expressive language skills using a similar but modified test. The participants were 106 preschool children between the age of 4 and 6 years, 11 months. The Developmental Language Test was adapted as a linguistically and culturally appropriate tool for assessing isiZulu expressive language skills.
The overall performance of the children in phases 1 and 2 were statistically similar. There was significant Pearson's correlation of expressive language skills to age (0.002, P < 0.01), schistosomiasis i.e. vocabulary 1 (0.024, P < 0.05) and narrative skills (0.001, P < 0.01) and soil-transmitted helminths i.e. vocabulary 1 (0.006, P < 0.05), colours (0.029, P < 0.05) and narrative skills (0.001, P < 0.01) in phase 2 with small to high Cohen's d effect size for various language subtests.
We concluded that even mild schistosomiasis and STH may compromise the performance of preschool children on expressive language. However poor ability in following instructions may have contributed to general poor performance across the two groups tested. Diet, school effect and stunting did not influence the performance of the children on expressive language.
血吸虫病和土壤传播的蠕虫（STH）与儿童发育受损有关。我们确定了血吸虫病和 STH 对祖鲁语学龄前儿童表达性语言技能的影响，重点关注以下变量：年龄、性别、学校和发育迟缓。
我们使用两阶段方法定量比较了感染组和未感染组儿童的表现。在第 1 阶段，用吡喹酮治疗感染儿童，并与未感染儿童匹配，然后对两组儿童进行表达性语言表现测试。在第 2 阶段，使用类似但修改后的测试对两组儿童进行了重新测试。参与者为 106 名年龄在 4 至 6 岁 11 个月的学龄前儿童。发展性语言测试被改编为评估祖鲁语表达性语言技能的语言和文化上合适的工具。
第 1 阶段和第 2 阶段儿童的整体表现具有统计学意义。表达性语言技能与年龄呈显著正相关（0.002，P<0.01），与血吸虫病即词汇 1（0.024，P<0.05）和叙事技能（0.001，P<0.01）呈显著正相关，与土壤传播的蠕虫即词汇 1（0.006，P<0.05）、颜色（0.029，P<0.05）和叙事技能（0.001，P<0.01）呈显著正相关。在第 2 阶段，各种语言子测试的 Cohen's d 效应大小为小至大。
我们得出结论，即使是轻度的血吸虫病和 STH 也可能影响学龄前儿童表达性语言的表现。然而，两组测试中普遍表现不佳可能是由于未能很好地听从指令所致。饮食、学校效应和发育迟缓对儿童表达性语言的表现没有影响。
