Complication of corticosteroid treatment by acute Plasmodium malariae infection confirmed by small-subunit rRNA sequencing

Abstract

We report a case of acute Plasmodium malariae infection complicating corticosteroid treatment for membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis in a patient from an area where P. malariae infection is not endemic. A peripheral blood smear showed typical band-form trophozoites compatible with P. malariae or Plasmodium knowlesi. SSU rRNA sequencing confirmed the identity to be P. malariae.

FIG. 1.

Peripheral blood smear of our patient, taken on the day of admission. (a) Thick ring; (b) band-form trophozoite, typical of P. malariae or P. knowlesi; (c) schizonts containing dark brown pigments.

FIG. 2.

Phylogenetic tree showing the relationships of the patient's Plasmodium species to other, closely related Plasmodium species. The tree was inferred from SSU rRNA data by the neighbor-joining method using Kimura's two-parameter correction and was rooted using Cryptosporidium baileyi (EU814425.1). Two hundred one nucleotide positions were included in the analysis. The scale bar indicates the estimated number of substitutions per 50 bases. All names and accession numbers are given as cited in the GenBank database.