TABLE 1.

Clinical and laboratory measures in children^a

Characteristic	Result for group			P
	Healthy controls	Mild malaria	Severe malaria
No. of children	23	10	10
Age (yr)	4.9 (0.5)	5.1 (0.5)	4.9 (0.6)	0.99
No. male/female	11/12	6/4	4/6	0.66b
Parasitemia
No. of parasites/μl	0	52,899 (10,437)	355,571 (58,050)	<0.01c
Geometric mean	0	39,890	330,092
Hemoglobin (g/dl)	10.6 (0.3)	10.1 (0.5)	6.7 (0.5)	<0.001
Axillary temp (°C)	37.8 (0.18)	38.2 (0.2)	39.6 (0.4)	<0.01

^aHealthy controls (aparasitemic for 4 weeks or greater) were recruited from a longitudinal cohort study. Acute malaria cases were recruited upon presentation at hospital. Mild malaria was defined by hemoglobin between 5.1 and 11.0 g/dl, with parasitemia less than 150,000 parasites/μl, while severe malaria was defined by hemoglobin less than or equal to 5.0 g/dl and/or parasitemia >200,000 parasites/μl. Heel- or finger-prick blood (∼100 μl) was obtained to determine parasitemia and anemia status. Peripheral blood smears were prepared and stained with Giemsa reagent and examined under oil immersion for malaria parasites. Asexual malaria parasites were counted against 300 leukocytes, and parasite densities were estimated assuming a count of 8,000 white blood cells per microliter of blood. Hemoglobin levels were measured using a HemoCue system (HemoCue AB, Angelholm, Sweden). Data are presented as the mean (standard error in parentheses) and comparisons between groups were performed by Kruskal-Wallis test unless otherwise noted.

^bDifferences between the proportions were determined by chi-square analysis.

^cDifferences between mild and severe cases determined by Mann-Whitney U test.