Figure 4. Multiple correspondence analysis classified by Plasmodium species, parasitemia and number of previous malaria episodes.

The confidence ellipse delimitates the centroid around each variable. For Parasitemia, ellipses are separated, indicating a good distinction in symptom profile between low and high parasitemia. Patients with higher parasitemia (≥300 parasites/mm³) have more symptoms (pink ellipse is seen in the left-hand side of dimension 1) and those with lower parasitemia (<300 parasites/mm³) tend to have fewer symptoms (blue ellipse represented on the right-hand side of dimension 1). For Plasmodium species, ellipses are superimposed, indicating that the symptom profile shown in each type of malaria is very similar, and therefore malaria species cannot be differentiated using symptoms only. For number of previous episodes of malaria, there is little superimposition of the ellipses, indicating that it is possible to separate between those patients with more than eight previous malaria episodes, who generally experience fewer symptoms (pink ellipse is in the right side of Dimension 1, indicating less symptoms), except for symptoms sore throat, which is more pronounced in these patients (note that the pink ellipse is above the blue ellipse in Dimension 2, indicating that symptoms distributed along dimension 2 are differentiating patients with 8 or more episodes from those with less than 8 episodes).