Alterations in T-helper cell type 1 and blood cell parameters in malaria-infected patients

Malaria is a global public health disease. Haematological and cytokine alterations are the major sources of its pathological conditions. Therefore, blood and serum of patients attending health centres were screened to investigate the effects of Plasmodium falciparum on the T-helper cell type 1 and blood cell parameters using Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and automatic hematology analyzer respectively. Approximately 55% of malaria-infected patients with average parasitaemia of 2523.64 parasite/μl of blood concurrently suffered anaemia, thrombocytopenia, leucopenia, microcytosis and hypochromasia. However, thrombocytopenia and leucopenia were age-specific and their prevalences in children within ≤10 years were higher. These disease conditions significantly vary with severity of malaria infection (p < 0.05). Blood parameters with the exception of RBC and MCHC were significantly lower in the infected patients (p < 0.05) with 12.9% and 41.2% reduction in haemoglobin and platelet counts respectively. A high plasma concentration of IL-10, IL-12, INF-γ and TNF-α, ratio of IL-10/TNF-α (1.86) and IL-10/INF-γ (1.55) were recorded among the malaria-infected groups. This study revealed that unregulated interaction of the parasite with host immune response has important consequences in disease progression and thus relevant for therapeutic and vaccine development.