Bacterial Coinfection in Adults With Severe Malaria

Résumé fourni par la source

To the Editor—Approximately 6.4% of children with severe malaria in malaria-endemic regions have concomitant bacteremia [1]. As coinfected children have a higher mortality and their bacterial infection may be difficult to diagnose, international guidelines recommend that they receive both antimalarial and empirical broad-spectrum antibacterial therapy [2]. The same guidelines state that adults with severe malaria should not receive empirical antibacterial therapy [2]. There have been few published data to support this recommendation and so the work by Phu et al—which identified concomitant bacteremia in only 9/845 (1.07%) Vietnamese adults with severe malaria—is very welcome [3]. However, their figure of 1.07% is likely an underestimate. For most of their 1991–2003 study, manual blood cultures were collected, which the authors acknowledge may have a lower sensitivity. From September 1997 they did use BACTEC-plus® bottles, but collected a suboptimal 5–8 mL of blood. They...

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.