High Plasma Levels of Neopterin Are Associated with Increased Mortality among Children with Severe Malaria in Benin
Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Diagnostics
Abstract
Among the barriers to accessing adequate treatment and high-level monitoring for malaria
febrile patients is the lack of effective prognostic markers. Neopterin, which is a marker of monocyte/macrophage activation, was found have increased during severe malaria. In this study, we
used quantitative ELISA in order to assess the levels of plasma soluble neopterin in 151 patients
from a cohort of Beninese children with severe malaria. We evaluated the prognostic accuracy of
this molecule in order to predict the outcome of the disease. Our results show that neopterin levels
were not significantly different between patients with different forms of severe malaria, including
severe non-cerebral malaria (SNCM) and cerebral malaria (CM). However, the levels of this molecule
were found to be higher in patients with severe malarial anemia (SMA) among both CM and SNCM
cases (p-value = 0.02). Additionally, the levels of this molecule were found to be higher in patients
who died from these pathologies compared to those who survived among the two clinical groups
(p-value < 0.0001) and within the same group (p-value < 0.0001 for the CM group, p-value = 0.0046 for
the SNCM group). The AUC-ROC for fatality among all the severe cases was 0.77 with a 95%CI of
(0.69–0.85). These results suggest that plasma neopterin levels constitute a potential biomarker for
predicting fatality among severe falciparum malaria patients.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
neopterin, severe malaria, cerebral malaria
Citation
Citation: Blankson, S.O.; Rietmeyer, L.; Tettey, P.; Dikroh, L.; Tornyigah, B.; Adamou, R.; Moussiliou, A.; Padounou, C.; Amoussou, A.; Mensah, B.A.; et al. High Plasma Levels of Neopterin Are Associated with Increased Mortality among Children with Severe Malaria in Benin. Diagnostics 2023, 13, 528. https://doi.org/10.3390/ diagnostics13030528