Clustering of Brugia malayi infection in a community in South-Sulawesi, Indonesia

The present study was undertaken in village Karondang in South-Sulawesi, In donesia, to investigate the influences of genetic, household and environmen tal factors on Brugia malayi infection. Infection status was determined by measuring both microfilariae in night blood and anti-filarial IgG4, as a ma rker for detection of active filarial infection. A total of 171 residents p articipated in the study; familial relationships between subjects were regi stered to construct pedigrees and distances between households were measure d. The data were analysed using a test statistic for familial aggregation. For distribution of microfilariae over the study population a genetic influ ence on infection susceptibility was favoured over the household and enviro nmental effects. For anti-filarial IgG4, all 3 clustering models gave signi ficant results, suggesting that genetic, household and/or environmental fac tors influence specific IgG4 antibodies.