Replication Data for: Impact of malaria on haematological parameters of urban, peri-urban and rural patients in the Ashanti region of Ghana

This study was aimed at investigating the haematological changes that occur in malaria patients across the different demographic settlements such as rural, peri-urban and urban settlements
We conducted a hospital-based cross-sectional study from January to December, 2018 from three different settlements. A total of 598 participants were recruited in the study. Giemsa-stained blood smears were examined for the detection and quantification of malaria parasitemia while hematological parameters were measured using hematology analyzer.
The rural settlement had the highest malaria prevalence (p=0.009) compared to the other study communities. The difference in parasite density across the three communities was also significant (p=0.0149). When the malaria infected population was compared to the uninfected, there were differences in red blood cell count (p=0.0170), hemoglobin levels (p=0.0165), mean corpuscular volume (p=0.0139) and platelets (p<0.0001) counts. The difference in median WBC (p-value <0.0001), neutrophil (p-value <0.0001) and lymphocyte (p-value <0.0269) were significantly higher in infected patients from the peri-urban area compared to malaria patients from the rural and urban areas. There were also significant differences in platelet (p=0.0002), plateletcrit (p=0.0041), mean platelet volume (p=0.0009) and platelet large cell ratio (p=0.0046) levels be-tween patients from the urban, peri-urban and rural areas.
Patients infected with malaria generally had low RBC, Hb and platelets in comparison to unin-fected patients. The variation of hematological parameters due to malaria infection can give a hint for a thorough search of the parasite in the peripheral blood and this could help improvemalaria diagnosis.