Public Health Resources
Date of this Version
2014
Citation
Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 91(1), 2014, pp. 1–2
Abstract
The report by Quispe and others in this issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene adds to the substantial and growing body of evidence that a diagnosis of Plasmodium vivax malaria often occurs with serious and threatening illness. The retrospective study by Quispe and others of malaria admissions to a hospital in coastal Peru comes with assurance of no confounding by P. falciparum by virtue of its absence from the region. About one-quarter of patients were classified as critically ill with severe anemia, shock, lung injury, renal failure, and cerebral syndromes, and two patients (about 8% of the critically ill) did not survive. Essentially similar rates and findings have come from numerous hospital-based studies from all across the global reach of endemic vivax malaria transmission. Quispe and others1 express appropriate caution regarding undiagnosed comorbidities that may have exacerbated illness in some of those patients.
Comments
Copyright © 2014 by The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene