Question

A 50 yr old woman presents with complaints of fever, chills, nausea, vomiting for the past 5 days. She is especially concerned because she just returned from a 3 week mission trip to Africa. She was careful about using insect repellent and wearing long sleeved clothing. Starting a few days after her return she has had episodes of shaking chills followed by fever spikes as high as 103.5F, and profuse sweating. After these episodes she would feel so exhausted that she would sleep for hours. These severe episodes have been occurring every other day (days 1 and 3). In between these episodes she has had a low grade fever, myalgia, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. On examination, she appears very fatigued and pale. A complete blood count shows her to be anemic.

1. What test would you perform to verify and identify the most likely organism?

2. What would you expect to see in this sample?

3. What organism is responsible for this infection?

4. How could you speciate the infection? Please be detailed

Answer 1

SOLUTION:-

1. Rapid diagnostic test for malarial parasite antigen and complete blood count. It is caused by plasmodium.

2. Less number of RBC will be present in the sample and presence of malarial antigen in rapid diagnostic kit.

3. Plasmodium.

4. There are many species:

1) P.vivax.

2) P.Falciparum.

3) P.Malariae.

4) P.ovalae.

* So when they infect RBCs they chage the shape of RBCs as follow Cresecent-P.Falciparum, Amoeboid-P.vivax, Elongated-P.ovalae.

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