Researchers in Kenya have tracked the incidence of neurological symptoms in infants with malaria, and have found that early infections expose many children to brain damage.

Malaria is a devastating disease, killing more than a million people globally every year. But research at Kenya Medical Research Institute–Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya, shows that damage from malaria may go well beyond death: children infected in their first few years of life may suffer from seizures and long-term motor and sensory disorders.

Although malarial parasites don't invade neural tissues, they can damage the brain via the high fevers malaria causes, repeated seizures, and possibly through interfering with the function of the blood–brain interchange. Doctors have long recognised the existence of cerebral malaria, which produces seizures and coma. This study tracked the occurrence of these and additional neural symptoms in children, such as excessive irritability and extreme weakness.

Neurological symptoms were most common in the first five years of life and declined rapidly thereafter, so that children over five were rarely at risk of neural complications. Nearly half the children showed signs of neurological symptoms, and those that did were roughly three times more likely to die during the study period. About 2 per cent of the survivors had evidence of neurological damage at the time of discharge.

Although this percentage is small, the researchers estimate that, during the 13 years that their study ran, at least 1.1 million children had symptoms that put them at risk of brain injury every year.

• This research was supported by the Wellcome Trust and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

External links

• Idro R et al. Burden, features, and outcome of neurological involvement in acute falciparum malaria in Kenyan children. JAMA 2007;297(20):2232–40.