Insights into deregulated TNF and IL-10 production in malaria: implications for understanding severe malarial anaemia.

Background: Severe malarial anaemia (SMA) is a major life-threatening complication of paediatric malaria. Protracted production of pro-inflammatory cytokines promoting erythrophagocytosis and depressing erythropoiesis is thought to play an important role in SMA, which is characterized by a high TNF/IL-10 ratio. Whether this TNF/IL-10 imbalance results from an intrinsic incapacity of SMA patients to produce IL-10 or from an IL-10 unresponsiveness to infection is unknown.

Complement activation in Ghanaian children with severe Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

Background: Severe anaemia (SA), intravascular haemolysis (IVH) and respiratory distress (RD) are severe forms of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, with RD reported to be of prognostic importance in African children with malarial anaemia. Complement factors have been implicated in the mechanism leading to excess anaemia in acute P. falciparum infection.

High CD4/CD45RO+ and CD8/CD45RO+ frequencies in children with vaccine-modified measles.

Background: Despite availability and wide vaccine coverage, measles infections still occur especially in developing countries. An outbreak of measles occurred among previously immunized older Ghanaian children who had milder clinical symptoms with measles-specific IgG antibodies that could have been attributed to secondary vaccine failure, suggesting that the infection was vaccine-modified measles (VMM).

Methods: Two-color immunophenotyping of the peripheral blood mononuclear cells was performed at acute, recovery and convalescence phases for 19 VMM patients (mean age 6.

Evaluation of efficacy and safety of a herbal medicine used for the treatment of malaria.

Resistance of Plasmodium falciparum to chloroquine has been reported in several countries. Other anti-malarial drugs in use are expensive and not readily accessible to most people in malaria endemic countries. This has led to renewed interest in the development of herbal medicines that have the potential to treat malaria with little or no side effects.