29 Although the overall epilepsy prevalence was low (1.92‰), further analysis of the data revealed a positive trend between the onchocerciasis seropositivity rate and the prevalence of epilepsy in the different study villages: Spearman’s rho=0.54, p=0.07.
Both variables showed a highly significant relationship with the prevalence of epilepsy, although with an opposite effect: the prevalence of epilepsy increases with the prevalence of microfilariae (regression coefficient 0.046, p<0.001) but decreases with the duration of control (regression coefficient −0.059, p<0.001).