ABSTRACT Febrile illnesses in developing countries are often misdiagnosed as malaria or typhoid fever. Although arboviral infections have similar clinical symptoms, they are usually not screened because of limited resources and the fact that there are several viruses in this group. Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has been isolated in parts of Nigeria, but there is no documented evidence of the infection in Kogi State. This study determined seroprevalence of active and past CHIKV infection among febrile patients who tested negative for malaria and typhoid fever. Sera from 243 febrile patients were screened for CHIKV IgG and IgM using an immunochromatographic test kit. Clinical and socio-demographic variables were collected using a structured questionnaire. Recent CHIKV infection was observed in 5.8% of the study participants while 25.1% had IgG antibodies demonstrating previous infection. Significant associations were observed between seropositivity and age of participants (p < 0.001), sex (p = 0.044), marital status (p = 0.002), and occupation (p < 0.001). Clinical symptoms such as fever, joint pain, and headache were significantly associated with seropositivity. This study identified recent CHIKV infection in Anyigba. Therefore, there is need for routine screening of febrile patients and molecular characterization to determine the nature of circulating strains.

Two recent extensions of the residence time distribution concept are developed. The first one concerns the use of this method under transient conditions, a concept theoretically treated but rarely confirm by relevant experiments. In the present work, two experimental set-ups have been used to verify some limits of the concept. The second extension is devoted to the development of hydrodynamic models. Up to now, the hydrodynamics of the process are either determined by simple models (mixing cells in series, plug flow reactor with axial dispersion) or by the complex calculation of the velocity profile obtained via the Navier-Stokes equations. An alternative is to develop a hydrodynamic model by use of a complex network of interconnected elementary reactors. Such models should be simple enough to be derived easily and sufficiently complex to give a good representation of the behavior of the process.