Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Dec;8(12):e11744.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11744. Epub 2022 Nov 18.

Profiles of host immune impairment in Plasmodium and SARS-CoV-2 infections

Rini Chaturvedi  1 , Mradul Mohan  2   3 , Sanjeev Kumar  4 , Anmol Chandele  4 , Amit Sharma  1   3
Affiliations
Review

Profiles of host immune impairment in Plasmodium and SARS-CoV-2 infections

Rini Chaturvedi et al. Heliyon. 2022 Dec.

Abstract

Over the past two decades, many countries have reported a steady decline in reported cases of malaria, and a few countries, like China, have been declared malaria-free by the World Health Organization. In 2020 the number of deaths from malaria has declined since 2000. The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected overall public health efforts and thus it is feasible that there might be a resurgence of malaria. COVID-19 and malaria share some similarities in the immune responses of the patient and these two diseases also share overlapping early symptoms such as fever, headache, nausea, and muscle pain/fatigue. In the absence of early diagnostics, there can be a misdiagnosis of the infection(s) that can pose additional challenges due to delayed treatment. In both SARS-CoV-2 and Plasmodium infections, there is a rapid release of cytokines/chemokines that play a key role in disease pathophysiology. In this review, we have discussed the cytokine/chemokine storm observed during COVID-19 and malaria. We observed that: (1) the severity in malaria and COVID-19 is likely a consequence primarily of an uncontrolled 'cytokine storm'; (2) five pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α, type I IFN, and IFN-γ) are significantly increased in severe/critically ill patients in both diseases; (3) Plasmodium and SARS-CoV-2 share some similar clinical manifestations and thus may result in fatal consequences if misdiagnosed during onset.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cytokine storm; Immune impairment; Malaria; Plasmodium; SARS-CoV-2.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The figure illustrates the clinical symptoms and the cytokines involved in dysregulation of the pathophysiology in severe COVID-19 and malaria infections. The image has been created with BioRender.com.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. WHO . 2021. WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard.
    1. Fragkou P.C., Belhadi D., Peiffer-Smadja N., Moschopoulos C.D., Lescure F.X., Janocha H., Karofylakis E., Yazdanpanah Y., Mentré F., Skevaki C., Laouénan C., Tsiodras S. Review of trials currently testing treatment and prevention of COVID-19. Clin. Microbiol. Infect. 2020;26:988–998. - PMC - PubMed
    1. World health Organization The Potential Impact of Health Service Disruptions on the burden of Malaria: a Modelling Analysis for Countries in Sub-saharan Africa 2020. 2020. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240004641
    1. Zawawi A., Alghanmi M., Alsaady I., Gattan H., Zakai H., Couper K. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on malaria elimination. Parasite Epidemiol. Control. 2020;11 - PMC - PubMed
    1. World health Organization Outbreaks and Emergencies Bulletin, Week 28: 05 – 11 July 2021. 2021. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/342715/OEW28-0511072021...

LinkOut - more resources

  NODES
chat 3
INTERN 4
twitter 2