Co-infection of malaria and typhoid fever in a tropical community

Abstract

A study was carried out on patients clinically diagnosed of malaria or typhoid or both, at Nnewi Anambra State, Nigeria, to investigate the level of association between malaria and typhoid fever infections. The stool culture was used as an additional diagnostic test for typhod fever. The study indicated that out of 256 patients, 29(14.36 %) were diagnosed with concurrent malaria and typhoid fever based on bacterioogcal method as compared to147 (57.42 %) base on serological method. Plasmodum falciparum was the only Plasmodium species isolated. Furthermore, 42.59 % were lkely to have been falsely diagnosed of having concurrent malaria and typhoid fever using serology. Our study indicated that out of 202 (78.90 %) maaria positive patients, 13(6.44 %); 12(594 %) and 3(1.49 %) had concurrent malaria co-existing with Salmonella typhi, S. paratyhpi and S. typhimurium respectively. Malaria was positively associated with typhoid fever (P < 0.05) being more pronounced using serological diagnosis. The difference in the Pasmodium falciprum parasteamia and Salmonella antibody titre was only significant using Widal test. Diagnosis of typhoid fever in malaria positive patients using Widal test solely may lead to misleading and unreliable results.

Keywords: Co-infection, Plasmodium, Salmonella, Malaria, Typhoid fever