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Emerging Infectious Diseases
Volume 2, Number 2, April-June 1996

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Letters

Transfusion-Associated Malaria

To the Editor: A recent article by Zucker (1) described two cases of
malaria that were probably transfusion associated. A case of
transfusion-associated malaria in which the source was identified was
reported in San Francisco in 1991. The case was in an elderly man in whom
malaria infection developed after coronary bypass surgery.

The patient was born in China and immigrated to the United States in 1940.
His only travel outside the United States was a trip to Hong Kong in 1951
for 6 months. The patient’s wife was born in China and had malaria in 1941
during World War II. She received no treatment at that time or at any other
time. She came to the United States in 1960 and has not left the country
since.

The patient had six donors, five of whom had no history of malaria, and had
negative serologic test results for all four malaria species. Both the
patient and his wife had blood smears positive for P. malariae. The
patient’s wife had positive serologic test results for P. vivax and P.
ovale (1:64), for P. falciparum (1:258), and for P. malariae (1:1024).

Frances Taylor, M.D., M.P.H.
Director of Communicable Disease Control
City and County of San Francisco
Department of Public Health
Bureau of Epidemiology
Disease Control, and AIDS
San Francisco, California, USA

Reference

1. Zucker J. Changing patterns of autochthonous malaria transmission in the
United States: A review of current outbreaks. Emerging Infectious Diseases
1996: 2:37-43.