[Autochthonous Case of Malaria Prediagnosed as Leukemia]

Malaria is a parasitic disease transmitted by infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. There are five species of Plasmodium species that can infect humans. Of these species, especially P.falciparum and P.vivax pose the greatest threat to human health. In the 2014 report of the World Health Organization, it was reported that there were no locally acquired cases of malaria in 16 countries including Türkiye. Malaria cases originating from outside the country and imported due to migration, travel and working abroad are reported as import cases. In this report, a case of non-imported malaria followed with a preliminary diagnosis of leukemia was presented. A 14-year-old female patient who was admitted to a health institution with complaints of high fever, headache, chills, nausea-vomiting, and diarrhea that had been going on for two weeks, was pre-diagnosed as leukemia and was referred to Manisa Celal Bayar University Faculty of Medicine, Hafsa Sultan Hospital, Department of Pediatric Hematology and after pancytopenia was detected in the complete blood count. The anamnesis of the patient revealed that she had no history of international travel and that she had been prescribed medications such as paracetamol, amoxicillin, and metoclopramide for flu-like complaints while working in the Southeastern Anatolia, Aegean, and Mediterranean Regions of Türkiye. Bone marrow aspiration was performed for the etiological examination of pancytopenia. Giemsa-stained blood smears, rapid diagnostics, and real-time quantative polymerase chain reaction (qRt-PCR) analyses were performed in the medical parasitology laboratory and malaria was suspected in both bone marrow and peripheral blood smears. P.vivax erythrocytic forms and gametocytes were present in abundance in smear preparations stained with Giemsa, and rapid diagnosis kit was positive for P.vivax. The strain was genotyped as P.vivax by qRt-PCR analysis. For the treatment of the patient, airalam (artemether + lumefantrine) tablets were provided with 2 x 4 daily posology for three days after the diagnosis, and primaquine was provided after one week of the diagnosis as 1 x 2 tablets (1 x 15 mg) for 14 days, and the patient was discharged without complications following the treatment regimen. The fight against malaria continues uninterruptedly since the establishment of the Republic of Türkiye. Tropical diseases, especially malaria, is of great importance for Türkiye due to numerous reasons such as its location in the subtropical region where Anopheles mosquitoes are capable of malaria transmission, it is situated at the crossroads on the migration routes between continents where human traffic is busy, there are many people who go abroad for work and most importantly rising temperatures due to climate change. For this reason, this case report is important to emphasize the importance of malaria for the country and to increase the awareness of clinicians and laboratories about malaria and the possibility of autochthonous malaria transmission in Türkiye.