Parasite Burden and Severity of Malaria in Tanzanian Children
Bronner P. Gonçalves, M.D., Chiung-Yu Huang, Ph.D., Robert Morrison, M.Sc., Sarah Holte, Ph.D., Edward Kabyemela, M.D., Ph.D., D. Rebecca Prevots, Ph.D., Michal Fried, Ph.D., and Patrick E. Duffy, M.D.N Engl J Med 2014; 370:1799-1808May 8, 2014DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1303944
BACKGROUND
Although almost 600,000 African children die each year from malaria,1 most infections in children are mild.2,3 Fundamental questions about the pathogenesis of malaria remain unresolved, such as the relative contributions of parasite burden and host inflammation to severe disease.4 In areas where transmission is stable, severe malaria is unlikely to occur after 5 years of age, presumably as a result of immunity,5 and mathematical models suggest that protection against noncerebral severe malaria develops after one or two infections.6 The mechanism of protective immunity is unclear; it might, for example, involve the reduction of parasite density or the blocking of parasite virulence to prevent disease. IgG transferred from immune adults clears blood-stage parasites and symptoms in sick children,7 but the targets of protective IgG remain undefined.
To better understand the pathogenesis of severe malaria and acquired immunity, we undertook an intensive birth-cohort study of 882 children in northeastern Tanzania. We examined the relationship between the Plasmodium falciparum parasite burden and the severity of malaria within individual children over time and the risk of severe malaria during the first and subsequent infections.
METHODS
Study Population
The study population was part of a longitudinal birth cohort in the Muheza district, an area of intense malaria transmission with an entomologic inoculation rate of approximately 400 infective mosquito bites annually.8 The incidence of malaria declined sharply in this area after the study closed in 2006.9 Newborns were enrolled in the study between September 2002 and November 2005. Children were followed for an average of 2 years and for as long as 4 years. Written informed consent was obtained from all the children's mothers before enrollment.
Study Procedures
Children were examined at birth, once every 2 weeks during infancy, once every month after infancy, and during any illness. Blood smears were collected at all visits, regardless of whether symptoms were present. Parasitemia was defined as any P. falciparum detected in a Giemsa-stained blood smear, and high-density infection requiring parenteral treatment was defined as a parasite density of more than 2500 parasites per 200 white cells, in accordance with Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare guidelines. P. falciparum–specific histidine-rich protein 2 (PfHRP-2) levels in plasma were measured with the use of a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)10 (see the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org).
Children were classified as having severe malaria in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) criteria11 (hemoglobin level <5 g per deciliter, prostration, more than one convulsion in the past 24 hours, respiratory distress, or hypoglycemia). Children were classified as having moderately severe malaria if they did not fulfill the WHO criteria but had at least one of the following signs: a hemoglobin level lower than 6 g per deciliter, hyperthermia (temperature, >40°C), one convulsion in the past 24 hours, or a respiratory rate greater than 40 breaths per minute. Most cases of severe and moderately severe malaria (78.4%) were treated with quinine. The results of analyses of moderately severe malaria are presented in the Supplementary Appendix. Children were classified as having mild high-density infection if they had a parasite density of more than 2500 parasites per 200 white cells in the absence of severe or moderately severe symptoms. Children were followed until the end of the study (May 2006) or until they dropped out of the study.
The study protocols were approved by the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and by the institutional review boards of Seattle BioMed and the Medical Research Coordinating Committee in Tanzania.
Statistical Analysis
All cases of parasitemia occurring within 28 days after a previous case were considered to be a single infection. We estimated age-specific incidence rates of infection, mild high-density infection, and severe malaria using a Nelson–Aalen estimator12 with confidence intervals calculated by means of a nonparametric bootstrap method. A generalized-estimating-equation approach for Poisson regression was used to compare age-specific rates of severe malaria and high-density infection. The risk of severe malaria during a first infection was estimated by dividing the number of children with severe malaria during a first infection by the total number infected at least once; similar risk calculations were performed for subsequent infections, after children with previous episodes of severe malaria were excluded. Log-transformed parasite density before and after a first episode of severe malaria was compared with the use of a paired t-test.
Cox proportional-hazards models were fit to determine the influence of study variables (village of residence, use or nonuse of bed nets, presence or absence of sickle cell trait, α-thalassemia genotype, transmission season [low or high], birth season, sex, and a single variable combining status with respect to placental malaria and maternal parity) on time to first episode of severe malaria. A multivariate generalized-estimating-equation model with log-transformed parasite density as the dependent variable was developed to assess the effect of all study variables on the parasite burden. All reported P values are two-sided; P values lower than 0.05 were considered to indicate statistical significance. Details of the survival analysis and generalized-estimating-equation methods are provided in the Supplementary Appendix.
RESULTS
Study Population
During the recruitment period, 1045 mothers (of 1075 children) gave consent to participate and gave birth at the Muheza Designated District Hospital. After exclusions (see the Supplementary Appendix), 882 singleton infants were included in the analyses (Table 1TABLE 1Characteristics of the Study Population., of whom 688 (78.0%) were followed for at least 1 year. Baseline characteristics were similar in the overall population and among the children followed for more than 1 year. Most of the children (62.7%) slept with bed nets, and among these children, 29.7% slept with bed nets that were insecticide-treated. The prevalences of sickle cell trait (16.5%) and α-thalassemia (11.8% homozygous and 40.9% heterozygous) were similar to those in other East African populations.13,14
The study encompassed 1762.8 child-years and 38,261 blood smears, including 6319 P. falciparum–positive blood smears representing 3933 independent infections; 65.4% of the positive blood smears were documented during scheduled visits. Of the 882 children, 715 (81.1%) had at least one P. falciparum infection. A total of 102 children (11.6%) had severe malaria, with 122 episodes of severe malaria overall. Most of the children who had severe malaria (99 of 102) had only one or two episodes. Of the 15 children who had a second episode, 7 presented with the same syndrome on both occasions, and 7 of 15 second episodes occurred during infancy (Fig. S6 in the Supplementary Appendix), when the incidence of severe malaria peaks. Of the 688 children followed for at least 1 year, 624 (90.7%) became infected, and 98 (14.2%) had severe malaria.
Thirty-five children (4.0%) died; 11 deaths were attributed to malaria. The overall mortality rate in our cohort was lower than that previously reported in this area15; the difference may be related to the intensive follow-up in our study (see the Supplementary Appendix). The proportion of childhood deaths attributable to malaria (31%) was similar to that in other African communities.16-18
Parasite Burden and Severe Malaria
The ranges of parasite densities during severe malaria and during mild or asymptomatic malaria overlapped considerably, both in the overall cohort (Fig. S1A in the Supplementary Appendix) and in the subset of children who had severe malaria during follow-up (Fig. S1B in the Supplementary Appendix). Assessment of PfHRP-2 levels, another measure of parasite biomass, had similar results (Fig. S1C in the Supplementary Appendix). The mean parasite density was substantially higher during episodes of severe malaria than during mild or asymptomatic infections (P<0.001), largely because severe malaria was rare during low-density infections (Fig. S2 in the Supplementary Appendix). However, most high-density infections were not associated with severe malaria: 253 of 882 children had a total of 444 high-density infections with only mild symptoms, including 36 completely asymptomatic episodes.
Even among the 102 children who had severe malaria, most (67) had high-density infection with only mild symptoms before the first episode of severe malaria (21 children) (Figure 1AFIGURE 1
Risk of Severe Malaria and Parasite Density.
), after the first severe episode (55 children) (Figure 1B), or both. Both parasite density and PfHRP-2 levels were significantly higher during a mild high-density infection than during an episode of severe malaria; the mean ratio of parasite level during mild infection to parasite level during severe episodes was 6.3 (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.8 to 10.5; P<0.001; 67 children), and the geometric mean PfHRP-2 level was 4826 ng per milliliter (95% CI, 3378 to 6894) during a mild high-density infection versus 1305 ng per milliliter (95% CI, 516 to 3298) during a severe episode (P=0.01; 39 children).
Risk of First Episode of Severe Malaria
The incidence of infection increased during the first 6 months of life, then re
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