QUESTION: What are the symptoms of Malaria?
ANSWER: Malaria can have many different symptoms, but the initial signs are similar to a flu-like illness, with high fever, chills, headache and muscle soreness or aches. A characteristic sign of malaria is cyclical fever, with peaks of severity every two or three days. Additionally, some people will experience nausea, coughing, vomiting and/or diarrhea.
Because these symptoms are quite generic of a wide variety of illnesses, if you live in a malaria-endemic region, it is crucial to be tested when you develop such symptoms, rather than assuming it’s just the flu and soldiering on! If you have recently traveled to a malarial area and start to experience these signs of infection, similarly you should inform your doctor of your travel history, as otherwise they might not recognize your symptoms as potentially that of malaria.
If treated rapidly and with the correct medication, malaria is almost always completely treatable; it is only if treatment is delayed that it becomes more serious, with long-lasting and potentially fatal consequences. Similarly, if you take sensible precautions while living or traveling in malarial areas, such as taking prophylaxis (and taking them as per the instructions, for the full required amount of time!), avoiding being bitten by mosquitoes and sleeping under an insecticide-treated bed-net, you vastly reduce your chances of getting infected in the first place.
It’s also worth noting that different species of Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria, cause slightly different manifestations of the disease, and also require different forms of treatment. Plasmodium falciparum has a unique way of affecting the red blood cells it infects, which eventually can result in loss of function of internal organs. ‘Cerebral malaria’ is a particularly deadly version of this, whereby the function of the brain is affected. The cycles of fever, mentioned above, are caused by synchronous rupturing of the red blood cells in the body by the malaria parasite; P. falciparum, P. vivax and P. ovale complete this cycle every 48 hours, resulting in fever cycles of roughly two days (though P. falciparum can be unpredictable); P. malariae, on the other hand, has a cycle lasting 72 hours, so three day cycles of fever are expected. Finally, although many types of malaria can be successfully treated with the drug chloroquine, some strains, and notably of P. falciparum, have become resistant to this treatment. In these cases, artemesinin-based treatment is recommended, usually in combination with other therapies (artemesinin-combination therapy, or ACT). P. vivax, in addition, requires an additional drug, called primaquine, which is used to treat lingering liver stages of the parasite, to prevent reoccurrence of the infection.
If anyone wants to add to the above account of symptoms and/treatment, please put your comments below! For example, has anyone had malaria first hand and wants to describe their experience?
— Claire, Editor