Abstract

Background: Malaria is an endemic infection in southern region of Nigeria. This study was carried out among 1000 randomly selected school children aged 1 - 10 years to assess the effects of malaria on bilirubin metabolism.

Methods: Six hundred and ninety four (694) of the children (the test group) were of some private and government hospitals in Port Harcourt, while three hundred and six (306) apparently healthy children attending some private Nursery and Primary schools in Port Harcourt were the control group. 5ml of blood was collected from each child and dispensed into ethylene diethyl tetraacetic acid bottle and plain tubes. Whole blood in ethylene diethyl tetraacetic acid bottle was used for malaria parasite identification using thin and thick films stained with Giemsa Romanowsky stain, while the serum in plain tubes was used for bilirubin estimation using Jendrassik Groff method. The subjects were grouped into four; control group (non-infected), high malaria parasitaemic group, moderate malaria parasitaemic group and low malaria parasitaemic group.

Results: Generally, it was observed from the result that total bilirubin, conjugated bilirubin, unconjugated bilirubin, were significantly elevated (P < 0.05) in malaria infected individuals when compared to the non-infected subjects. In high malaria parasitaemic subjects, total, conjugated and unconjugated bilirubin, were elevated significantly (P < 0.05) more than that of low parasitaemic subjects, and likewise, they were significantly higher than those of moderate parasitaemic subjects. In all age groups (1 - 5, 6 - 10 and 1 - 10 years), total bilirubin, conjugated bilirubin, unconjugated were significantly (P < 0.05) elevated in malaria infected subjects when compared with non-infected subjects.

Conclusion: These significant changes in these parameters suggested that malaria parasitemia significantly causes hyperbiribinaemia among children below the age of 10 years and severity of the hyper bilirubinemia creases as the degree of parasitaemia increases. Left unchecked, this could result in bilirubin encephalopathy or child mortality.

Keywords: Children; Malaria; Bilirubin

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Citation

Citation: Roseanne A Okafor., et al. “Hyperbilirubinaemia in Malaria Infected Children in Port-Harcourt". Acta Scientific Microbiology 3.1 (2020): 130-135.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Roseanne A Okafor., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.