PARIS, Sept 21 (AFP) - People with HIV may be twice as likely to catch malaria compared to people who do not have the AIDS virus, according to the first research to confirm a link between the two diseases.
The finding is bad news for parts of southern Africa where AIDS incidence is surging and the malaria mosquito endemic, say the doctors, reporting their work in Saturday's issue of The Lancet.
The researchers monitored 484 people who visited a rural clinic in Uganda from 1990 and 1998, where their temperature was taken and blood monitored for any malaria parasites and for a count of CD4 cells -- the white blood cells that are unleashed by the immune system in response to an invader.
Malaria infection was found among 11.8 percent of individuals with the AIDS virus, compared with 6.3 percent among people who were HIV-negative.
The risk of malaria rose exponentially as the CD4 count fell among worsening AIDS patients.
The researchers were led by James Whitworth of the Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe, the Ugandan capital.
They call for an intensive effort to research the interaction between malaria and HIV -- how the AIDS virus' attack on the body's immune system can also lessen resistance to malaria.
Knowledge of a link can also help drug designers, giving them an insight into the mechanism of immune response.
In the meantime, the team says, the findings amount to an alarm call for southern Africa, where in some parts the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has already infected around a third of the population.
There are "profound implications for public health" given that people with HIV are also found to be substantially at risk from malaria, they say.
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