Scientists working in Kenya have found that the interaction between malaria and HIV infection may be causing both to spread more quickly in sub-Saharan Africa. The researchers are from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington.
The study is published in the Dec. 8, 2006 issue of Science.
After conducting tests in Kisumu, a town on the shores of Lake Victoria where there is a high incidence of malaria, researchers noticed that a co-infection effect may be occuring between malaria and HIV infection.
Once malaria gets into the blood of a person with HIV, it increases the level of the HIV virus by up to ten times during a malaria fever episode. This significantly increases the risk of them infecting a sexual partner with HIV. And once a person has HIV, they are more susceptible to malaria, and so it continues.
This could explain why HIV is spreading more quickly than through sexual transmission alone in that region.
The researchers used a mathematical model developed with HIV and malaria infection data from Malawi to estimate that in a population of 200,000, since 1980, 8,500 excess HIV infections and nearly 1 million excess malarial episodes (when the fever breaks out from time to time in an infected person) may be due to this “partnership” between the two diseases.
They suggest it is possible that similar effects may exist between HIV and other common diseases such as genital herpes and tuberculosis, which are widespread in the region.
“Dual Infection with HIV and Malaria Fuels the Spread of Both Diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa”
Laith J. Abu-Raddad, Padmaja Patnaik, and James G. Kublin
Science 8 December 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5805, pp. 1603 – 1606
DOI: 10.1126/science.1132338
Written by: Catharine Paddock
Writer: Medical News Today