Malaria is a cause of iron deficiency in African children.

Muriuki, John MuthiiORCID logo; Mentzer, Alexander JORCID logo; Mitchell, Ruth; Webb, Emily LORCID logo; Etyang, Anthony O; Kyobutungi, Catherine; Morovat, AlirezaORCID logo; Kimita, Wandia; Ndungu, Francis MORCID logo; Macharia, Alex W; +34 more...Ngetsa, Caroline J; Makale, Johnstone; Lule, Swaib AORCID logo; Musani, Solomon K; Raffield, Laura M; Cutland, Clare L; Sirima, Sodiomon BORCID logo; Diarra, Amidou; Tiono, Alfred B; Fried, Michal; Gwamaka, Moses; Adu-Afarwuah, SethORCID logo; Wirth, James PORCID logo; Wegmüller, RitaORCID logo; Madhi, Shabir A; Snow, Robert W; Hill, Adrian VSORCID logo; Rockett, Kirk AORCID logo; Sandhu, Manjinder S; Kwiatkowski, Dominic PORCID logo; Prentice, Andrew MORCID logo; Byrd, Kendra A; Ndjebayi, Alex; Stewart, Christine P; Engle-Stone, Reina; Green, Tim J; Karakochuk, Crystal D; Suchdev, Parminder S; Bejon, Philip; Duffy, Patrick EORCID logo; Davey Smith, GeorgeORCID logo; Elliott, Alison MORCID logo; Williams, Thomas N; and Atkinson, Sarah HORCID logo (2021) Malaria is a cause of iron deficiency in African children. Nature medicine, 27 (4). pp. 653-658. ISSN 1078-8956 DOI: 10.1038/s41591-021-01238-4
Copy

Malaria and iron deficiency (ID) are common and interrelated public health problems in African children. Observational data suggest that interrupting malaria transmission reduces the prevalence of ID1. To test the hypothesis that malaria might cause ID, we used sickle cell trait (HbAS, rs334 ), a genetic variant that confers specific protection against malaria2, as an instrumental variable in Mendelian randomization analyses. HbAS was associated with a 30% reduction in ID among children living in malaria-endemic countries in Africa (n = 7,453), but not among individuals living in malaria-free areas (n = 3,818). Genetically predicted malaria risk was associated with an odds ratio of 2.65 for ID per unit increase in the log incidence rate of malaria. This suggests that an intervention that halves the risk of malaria episodes would reduce the prevalence of ID in African children by 49%.


description
NMED-L105912_ArticleContent_v2_final.docx
subject
Published Version
Available under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

Download

Atom BibTeX OpenURL ContextObject in Span Multiline CSV OpenURL ContextObject Dublin Core Dublin Core MPEG-21 DIDL Data Cite XML EndNote HTML Citation JSON MARC (ASCII) MARC (ISO 2709) METS MODS RDF+N3 RDF+N-Triples RDF+XML RIOXX2 XML Reference Manager Refer Simple Metadata ASCII Citation EP3 XML
Export

Downloads