AI Article Synopsis

  • Adults with mixed malaria infections (P. vivax and P. falciparum) experience higher fever levels compared to those with single-species infections.
  • The study involved 2308 adults in Thailand, measuring their oral temperatures and examining blood samples for malaria diagnosis.
  • The findings suggest that increased fever in mixed infections is not linked to the amount of malaria parasites present, highlighting the need for further research on this phenomenon.

Article Abstract

Background: Clinical symptoms of mixed-species malaria infections have been variously reported as both less severe and more severe than those of single-species infections.

Methods: Oral temperatures were taken from and blood slides were prepared for 2308 adults who presented at outpatient malaria clinics in Tak Province (Thailand) during May-August 1998, May-July 1999, and May-June 2001 with malaria infections diagnosed by 2 expert research microscopists, each of whom was blinded to the other's reports.

Results: In each year, temperatures of patients with mixed Plasmodium vivax-Plasmodium falciparum infections were higher than temperatures of patients with P. vivax or P. falciparum infections. In every mixed-species case, P. falciparum parasitemia was higher than P. vivax parasitemia, but patient temperature was not correlated with the parasitemia of either species or with the total parasitemia.

Conclusions: Among adults who self-report to malaria clinics in western Thailand, patients with mixed P. vivax-P. falciparum infections have higher fevers than patients with single-species infections, a distinction that cannot be attributed to differences in parasitemia. This observation warrants more detailed investigations, spanning wider ranges of ages and transmission environments.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2481387PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/504330DOI Listing

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