Comparative Evaluation of the Serum Micronutrients in Malaria-infected Patients and Healthy Subjects

Background: Malaria, an endemic infection within tropical regions across the globe, is known to have a high level of malnutrition burden.

Aim: To determine the serum level of micronutrients in healthy subjects and malaria-infected people.

Methods: The study used a cross-sectional approach to sample 400 subjects with random selection techniques. 200 were selected from malaria-infected subjects while 200 subjects were taken from healthy subjects. Thick and thin film smears were viewed microscopically to confirm positive and negative subjects. An automated analyzer was used to measure micronutrients.

Results: All control subjects were significantly higher (p=<.0001) than the malaria-infected patients for calcium, magnesium, phosphate and iron. Micronutrients that showed a significant comparison of means using one-way analyses of variance were iron (p=<.0001), phosphate (p=.0023), and calcium (p=<.0001). The post hoc analyses showed that for the iron parameter, subjects within the age range of 1 to 10 years (10.4±1.4 µmol/L) exhibited significantly lower serum levels compared to 21-30 years (14.2±1.4 µmol/L, p=<.0001), 31-40 years (14.6±1.2 µmol/L, p=<.0001), and ≥41 (12.8±1.4 µmol/L, p=<.0089). Similarly, people within the age range of 11 to 20 years (11.6±2.1 µmol/L) showed significantly lower serum levels of iron compared to those people within the age ranges of 21 to 30 years (14.2±1.4 µmol/L, p=.0039) and 31 to 40 years (14.6±1.2 µmol/L, p=.0007). All the correlations between the age and the malaria infection showed significant correlations for all the micronutrients with p-values of <.0001. On the contrary, the healthy subjects only had significant correlations for calcium and phosphate. Calcium showed significant correlations for both control and healthy subjects but with moderate correlations with malaria-infected people having a positive correlation (r=0.6823), while healthy subjects had negative correlation (r=-0.6753).

Conclusion: Micronutrients such as iron, phosphate, calcium and magnesium were significantly higher in healthy subjects than malaria-infected subjects. This implies that these nutrients could play a crucial role as a likely risk factor for the infection.