QUESTION

I was bitten by mosquitoes many years ago and I was wondering can the symptoms lie dormant for as long as 40 years? The reason I am asking is that every summer I am ill with several of these symptoms. I do not have a good immune system.

ANSWER

There are a couple of types of malaria, namely Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium ovale, which can lie dormant for many years, and often cause relapses at regular intervals.

Next time you suffer from these symptoms, you should go to your doctor and have a blood test to check for malaria; while you are experiencing symptoms, if you have malaria, the parasites will be visible in your blood.

Once positively diagnosed, your doctor can provide you with treatment. If you do have malaria, you will need one medication to clear the infection from your blood (which kind depends on where you were when you got those mosquito bites; malaria has become resistant to certain types of medication in some areas), plus another type of medication to kill the dormant forms which are responsible for the yearly relapses. This latter medication is called primaquine, and is not recommended for people with G6DP deficiency, so you should be tested for this prior to taking the medication.

Having said all of that, it is very important to get the blood test if you suspect you have malaria, because the symptoms of malaria are very general (fever, chills, nausea, aches) and can be mistaken for many other illnesses. If your blood test is negative for malaria, then you should talk to your doctor about other possible infections.