Is it Malaria?

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QUESTION

I was in Zambia 3-4 weeks ago and had yellow fever shot and malaria pills. A week ago I got a severe headache. I suffer from migraines now and then but it wasn’t one. The headache has not passed. 4 days ago I was feeling really ill. I was extremely tired and disorientated. I am nauseated, but not all the time. Have no appetite. I generally feel ill, like something isn’t right. Exhausted and almost confused. I just don’t have a fever and haven’t had the entire time—that’s why I haven’t been to doc for tests. Is having a fever the main symptom for Malaria? I am not pregnant and am generally a very healthy person.

Not sure if I should go for tests or just wait a few more days?

ANSWER

Fever is certainly a key symptom associated with malaria, due to the way the disease progresses through the human body. However, if you were taking malaria pills, it might be that they suppressed the infection sufficiently to reduce your symptoms. I would certainly recommend having a malaria test, if just for peace of mind. If you test positive you can immediately be treated, and if you are negative and still feeling unwell, you can discuss other possibilities with your doctor. One thought might be worm infections – helminths such as hookworm, roundworm (Ascaris or Strongyloides) or whipworm are very common in Zambia and are associated with symptoms of tiredness, listlessness, headache and nausea. The tests for these diseases are usually easy to perform from either a stool sample or blood test, and treatment is likewise very straightforward, with a single dose of albendazole or mebendazole for Ascaris, whipworm and hookworm, and a series of doses for Strogyloidiasis (this parasite can be harder to get rid of, though it is still very treatable. Ivermectin is another possible drug for this helminth).

Inexpensive, Common Drug Found to be Effective Against Malaria Transmission

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Researchers have found that an inexpensive and widely-available drug (Ivermectin) used to treat river blindness in Africa, round worm and head lice in American school children is also effective in reducing malaria transmission, especially during seasonal epidemics of this worldwide scourge.

“Can you kill a mosquito when it’s biting you [with] something that’s in your blood,” asked Brian Foy.

Malaria researcher Brian Foy of Colorado State University found out that yes, you can. He is working on a malaria control program and says there are many benefits to killing mosquitos as they bite their hosts.

Foy says that this not only is a clever way of getting a toxin directly to the malaria-causing parasite living in mosquitos, but it also saves the environment from harmful insecticides.

In a field study done on malaria transmission in Senegalese villages, Foy and his colleagues found that a drug already widely used for treating the two most common parasitic diseases in Africa – river blindness and elephantiasis – also has insecticidal properties.

“We are repurposing a really cheap and important drug for worm control potentially to control malaria,” he said.

The study shows that after single doses of the drug Ivermectin were administered to residents of several Senegalese villages, there was a 79 percent reduction in mosquitoes found to be carrying the malaria parasite. In villages where the drug was not given, the malarial mosquitoes increased by 246 percent.

Researchers found that the drug circulating in people’s blood killed the mosquitoes. Ivermectin is given once every year in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa to fight common infections. But researchers say that if the drug is given more often, it can provide other benefits.

“If you give it more often, [as] we are proposing for malaria transmission control, it will start to have an effect against the soil-transmitted illness that people have in their guts – things like whip worm, round worm and maybe even hookworms, which cause a lot of hidden illnesses in people,” said Foy.

Peter Hotez, president of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, calls Foy’s study groundbreaking. He says it proves what many public health researchers have long suspected – that drugs used to combat neglected tropical diseases have important collateral health benefits.

“It opens up a new pathway for discovering an additional class of drugs specifically for this purpose – maybe a drug that can circulate in the body longer and then be better targeted for malaria specifically,” said Hotez.

Malaria kills almost 800,000 people around the world each year. Experts say Ivermectin would be a welcome addition to the anti-malaria arsenal of bed nets, pesticides, drugs and, perhaps one day soon, a vaccine. Public health experts say all these weapons will be needed in the years ahead to eradicate malaria permanently.

More information about Ivermectin.

Source: VOA