Imported malaria in a non-endemic area: the experience of the university of Campinas hospital in the Brazilian Southeast

Malaria Journal

Research

Stefanie C P Lopes¹  Fabio T M Costa¹  Catarina M S Castiñeiras¹  Letusa Albrecht¹  João C K Dos-Santos²  Carlos E Levy³  Marcus V G Lacerda⁴  Márcia T Garcia⁵  Rodrigo N Angerami⁵  Maria L Moretti⁶ 

[1] Departamento de Genética, Evolução e Bioagentes, Instituo de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, Brazil;Departamento de Genética, Evolução e Bioagentes, Instituo de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, Brazil;Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil;Departamento de Patologia Clínica, UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil;Fundação de Medicina Tropical Dr. Heitor Vieira Dourado, Manaus, AM, Brazil;Universidade do Estado do Amazonas, Manaus, AM, Brazil;Seção de Epidemiologia Hospitalar, Hospital das Clínicas, UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil;Seção de Epidemiologia Hospitalar, Hospital das Clínicas, UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil;Departamento de Clínica Médica, Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil;

关键词: Malaria;    Non-endemic area;    Brazil;    Plasmodium vivax;    Plasmodium falciparum;    Severity;    Epidemiology;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-13-280

 received in 2014-04-06, accepted in 2014-07-13,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAlthough malaria in Brazil almost exclusively occurs within the boundaries of the Amazon Region, some concerns are raised regarding imported malaria to non-endemic areas of the country, notably increased incidence of complications due to delayed diagnoses. However, although imported malaria in Brazil represents a major health problem, only a few studies have addressed this subject.MethodsA retrospective case series is presented in which 263 medical charts were analysed to investigate the clinical and epidemiological characterization of malaria cases that were diagnosed and treated at Hospital & Clinics, State University of Campinas between 1998 and 2011.ResultsAmongst all medical charts analysed, 224 patients had a parasitological confirmed diagnosis of malaria. Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum were responsible for 67% and 30% of the infections, respectively. The majority of patients were male (83%) of a productive age (median, 37 years old). Importantly, severe complications did not differ significantly between P. vivax (14 cases, 9%) and P. falciparum (7 cases, 10%) infections.ConclusionsSevere malaria cases were frequent among imported cases in Brazil outside of the Amazon area. The findings reinforce the idea that P. vivax infections in Brazil are not benign, regardless the endemicity of the area studied. Moreover, as the hospital is located in a privileged site, it could be used for future studies of malaria relapses and primaquine resistance mechanisms. Finally, based on the volume of cases treated and the secondary complications, referral malaria services are needed in the non-endemic areas of Brazil for a rapid and efficient and treatment.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Dos-Santos et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.