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Severe falciparum malaria in Gabonese children: clinical and laboratory features.

Dzeing-Ella, A; Nze Obiang, PC; Tchoua, R; Planche, T; Mboza, B; Mbounja, M; Muller-Roemer, U; Jarvis, J; Kendjo, E; Ngou-Milama, E; et al. Dzeing-Ella, A; Nze Obiang, PC; Tchoua, R; Planche, T; Mboza, B; Mbounja, M; Muller-Roemer, U; Jarvis, J; Kendjo, E; Ngou-Milama, E; Kremsner, PG; Krishna, S; Kombila, M (2005) Severe falciparum malaria in Gabonese children: clinical and laboratory features. MALARIA JOURNAL, 4 (1). ISSN 1475-2875 https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-4-1
SGUL Authors: Jarvis, Joseph Nicholas Krishna, Sanjeev Planche, Timothy David

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Malaria continues to claim one to two million lives a year, mainly those of children in sub-Saharan Africa. Reduction in mortality depends, in part, on improving the quality of hospital care, the training of healthcare workers and improvements in public health. This study examined the prognostic indicators of severe falciparum malaria in Gabonese children. METHODS: An observational study examining the clinical presentations and laboratory features of severe malaria was conducted at the Centre Hospitalier de Libreville, Gabon over two years. Febrile children aged from 0 to 10 years with Plasmodium falciparum infection and one or more features of severe malaria were enrolled. RESULTS: Most children presenting with severe falciparum malaria were less than 5 years (92.3% of 583 cases). Anaemia was the most frequent feature of severe malaria (67.8% of cases), followed by respiratory distress (31%), cerebral malaria (24%) hyperlactataemia (16%) and then hypoglycaemia (10%). Anaemia was more common in children under 18 months old, while cerebral malaria usually occurred in those over 18 months. The overall case fatality rate was 9%. The prognostic indicators with the highest case fatality rates were coma/seizures, hyperlactataemia and hypoglycaemia, and the highest case fatality rate was in children with all three of these features. CONCLUSIONS: Prompt and appropriate, classification and treatment of malaria helps identify the most severely ill children and aids early and appropriate management of the severely ill child.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2005 Ella et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Parasitology, Tropical Medicine, BLOOD LACTATE CONCENTRATIONS, AFRICAN CHILDREN, LACTIC-ACIDOSIS, RISK-FACTORS, PATHOPHYSIOLOGY, TRANSMISSION, ANALYZERS, EFFICACY, KINETICS, GLUCOSE, Age Distribution, Anemia, Child, Child, Preschool, Gabon, Humans, Hypoglycemia, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Lactates, Logistic Models, Malaria, Cerebral, Malaria, Falciparum, Nervous System Diseases, Parasitemia, Prognosis, Prospective Studies, Respiratory Insufficiency, Thrombocytopenia
SGUL Research Institute / Research Centre: Academic Structure > Infection and Immunity Research Institute (INII)
Journal or Publication Title: MALARIA JOURNAL
ISSN: 1475-2875
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Dates:
DateEvent
9 January 2005Published
Web of Science ID: WOS:000226994100001
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URI: https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/1415
Publisher's version: https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-4-1

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