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Nutritional status and susceptibility to malaria in Senegalese 1–5‐year‐old children
Author(s) -
FilloL Florie,
Cisse Badara,
Boulanger Denis,
Sokhna Cheikh,
Simondon Kirsten
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.22.1_supplement.307.2
Subject(s) - malaria , parasitemia , wasting , underweight , malnutrition , medicine , environmental health , cohort , tropical medicine , pediatrics , plasmodium falciparum , immunology , body mass index , overweight , pathology
In rural sub‐Saharan Africa, malaria and malnutrition are two major causes of morbidity and mortality of children under 5. To explore whether nutritional status at baseline has an impact on the susceptibility to malaria morbidity, a cohort of 874 rural Senegalese children aged 12–70 months was followed during one malaria season from July to December. Data on nutritional status and density of P. falciparum parasite were collected at the start of rainy season. Malaria morbidity was monitored each week through home visits by field workers. In multivariate models, both underweight and wasted children were at lower risk of experiencing at least one subsequent clinical malaria attack (OR=0.61 (95%CI: 0.40, 0.94), P=0.03 and OR=0.34 (0.15, 0.76), P<0.01, respectively). While stunting did not induce significantly higher susceptibility to clinical malaria, it increased the risk of presenting a high parasitemia at the onset of the rainy season (OR=2.42 (1.12, 5.24) P=0.03). Geometric mean density parasitemia of the first clinical malaria attack was lower in stunted children as compared to their non‐stunted counterparts (P<0.05), and the same was true for anaemic children (P=0.003). Our findings suggest that stunting and wasting may act differently on susceptibility to malaria, which might be due to different mechanisms involved in specific immune response, related to qualitative differences in nutrient deficits. Funding: Gates Foundation and IRD.