Data mining and machine learning approaches for prediction modelling of schistosomiasis disease vectors: Epidemic disease prediction modelling

A Proposed Framework for Early Prediction of Schistosomiasis

Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease that continues to be a leading cause of illness and mortality around the globe. The causing parasites are affixed to the skin through defiled water and enter the human body. Failure to diagnose Schistosomiasis can result in various medical complications, such as ascites, portal hypertension, esophageal varices, splenomegaly, and growth retardation. Early prediction and identification of risk factors may aid in treating disease before it becomes incurable. We aimed to create a framework by incorporating the most significant features to predict Schistosomiasis using machine learning techniques. A dataset of advanced Schistosomiasis has been employed containing recovery and death cases. A total data of 4316 individuals containing recovery and death cases were included in this research. The dataset contains demographics, socioeconomic, and clinical factors with lab reports. Data preprocessing techniques (missing values imputation, outlier removal, data normalisation, and data transformation) have also been employed for better results. Feature selection techniques, including correlation-based feature selection, Information gain, gain ratio, ReliefF, and OneR, have been utilised to minimise a large number of features. Data resampling algorithms, including Random undersampling, Random oversampling, Cluster Centroid, Near miss, and SMOTE, are applied to address the data imbalance problem. We applied four machine learning algorithms to construct the model: Gradient Boosting, Light Gradient Boosting, Extreme Gradient Boosting and CatBoost. The performance of the proposed framework has been evaluated based on Accuracy, Precision, Recall and F1-Score. The results of our proposed framework stated that the CatBoost model showed the best performance with the highest accuracy of (87.1%) compared with Gradient Boosting (86%), Light Gradient Boosting (86.7%) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (86.9%). Our proposed framework will assist doctors and healthcare professionals in the early diagnosis of Schistosomiasis.

Forecasting COVID19 parameters using time-series: KSA, USA, Spain, and Brazil comparative case study

Many countries are suffering from the COVID19 pandemic. The number of confirmed cases, recovered, and deaths are of concern to the countries having a high number of infected patients. Forecasting these parameters is a crucial way to control the spread of the disease and struggle with the pandemic. This study aimed at forecasting the number of cases and deaths in KSA using time-series and well-known statistical forecasting techniques including Exponential Smoothing and Linear Regression. The study is extended to forecast the number of cases in the main countries such that the US, Spain, and Brazil (having a large number of contamination) to validate the proposed models (Drift, SES, Holt, and ETS). The forecast results were validated using four evaluation measures. The results showed that the proposed ETS (resp. Drift) model is efficient to forecast the number of cases (resp. deaths). The comparison study, using the number of cases in KSA, showed that ETS (with RMSE reaching 18.44) outperforms the state-of-the art studies (with RMSE equal to 107.54). The proposed forecasting model can be used as a benchmark to tackle this pandemic in any country.

Prediction of antischistosomal small molecules using machine learning in the era of big data

Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by helminths of the Schistosoma genus. Despite its high morbidity and socio-economic burden, therapeutics are just a handful with praziquantel being the main drug. Praziquantel is an old drug registered for human use in 1982 and has since been administered en masse for chemotherapy, risking the development of resistance, thus the need for new drugs with different mechanisms of action. This review examines the use of machine learning (ML) in this era of big data to aid in the prediction of novel antischistosomal molecules. It first discusses the challenges of drug discovery in schistosomiasis. Explanations are then offered for big data, its characteristics and then, some open databases where large biochemical data on schistosomiasis can be obtained for ML model development are examined. The concepts of artificial intelligence, ML, and deep learning and their drug applications are explored in schistosomiasis. The use of binary classification in predicting antischistosomal compounds and some algorithms that have been applied including random forest and naive Bayesian are discussed. For this review, some deep learning algorithms (deep neural networks) are proposed as novel algorithms for predicting antischistosomal molecules via binary classification. Databases specifically designed for housing bioactivity data on antischistosomal molecules enriched with functional genomic datasets and ontologies are thus urgently needed for developing predictive ML models. This shows the application of machine learning techniques for the discovery of novel antischistosomal small molecules via binary classification in the era of big data.