Lipid and lipoprotein levels in children with malaria parasitaemia

It is a common advice in the eastern region of Nigeria that anyone with high fever suspected to be malaria should not take much fatty meal. There is not yet definite biochemical reason for this. We assessed lipid profiles of twenty (20) children, aged between one and twelve years, suffering from malaria. Another fifteen (15) age-matched, uninfected children, were used as controls. Our parameters included total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL), very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) and triglyceride. Pa-tients were later classified according to the severity of the infection represented by the den-sity of malaria parasites seen per high field of thick film. Our results showed that these lipo-proteins significantly decreased (p<0.05) in the patients than in the control group. However there was no correlation between the malaria density and the levels of these lipoproteins. We suggest that mild fatty nutrients should be recommended to this class of patients for effec-tive stability and prevention of weight loss during the treatment, bearing in mind that they are not even at risk of any condition caused by hyperlipidaemia.