This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Malaria-induced retinal changes do not affect VA at 1 month
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Macular whitening as a result of severe malaria does not appear to affect visual acuity 1 month after systemic recovery, according to a study.
Nicholas Beare, FRCOphth, and colleagues at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in England and elsewhere retrospectively reviewed the charts of all children with severe malaria admitted to a research ward in Blantyre, Malawi. Visual acuity was tested in 83 patients who attended follow-up.
No significant difference was found in the VA between the groups with or without macular whitening. There was no trend found for worse VA with increasing severity of macular whitening.
The authors said this finding supports the hypothesis that retinal whitening is due to reversible intracellular edema in response to hypoxia caused by the malarial infection.
Six children had cortical blindness after cerebral malaria, and all of them had other neurological sequelae. The authors said this impaired visual function was not related to retinal whitening.
The study is published in the March issue of British Journal of Ophthalmology.