Prevalence of leptospirosis among patients attending renal and general outpatient clinics in Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda

In this study, we sought to establish the prevalence of leptospirosis among renal patients and general outpatients attending Mulago National Referral Hospital, Uganda. A total of 254 patients were recruited, their blood samples collected and interviewer-administered semi-structured questionnaires provided between July and October 2018. These questionnaires captured data on sociodemographic characteristics and symptoms of leptospirosis disease. An individual with an average body temperature of 37.3 ± 1.1 °C was considered to be having fever. The blood samples were analyzed using the standard Microscopic Agglutination Test (MAT) with a panel of 14 Leptospira-serovars belonging to 11 serogroups. Prevalence was reported with confidence intervals while questionnaire data was analyzed using logistic regression analysis. We present an overall prevalence of leptospirosis at 4.70% (95% CI = 2.60–8.30) after analysis of samples from recruited patients. This seropositivity (12/254) was classified into 7 serovars, among which, Canicola and Djasiman presented with titers between ≥ 200 and ≥ 400 in samples of both renal patients and outpatients, indicative of the active disease. Djasiman was the highest contributor to the reported prevalence. Overall, most examined participants presented with common symptoms of abdominal pain (AOR = 24.4, 95% CI (2.42–267.89), p = 0.02) and dehydration (AOR = 0.1, 95% CI (0.01–0.69), p = 0.05). Our study suggests that these symptoms and previous history of abdominal pain may be caused by Leptospira infections among the studied participants. We therefore recommend inclusion of leptospirosis in the differential diagnosis for renal and febrile illnesses. Indeed, abdominal pain and dehydration should be further studied with a bigger sample size and for other related febrile illnesses.