[Hypocalcemia in malaria. Study of correlations with other parameters]

In a privileged observation of severe malaria contracted after laboratory contamination, we noticed a deep hypocalcemia 67 mg/l = 1.67 mmol/l. Since then we found again that hypocalcemia, connected with hypoalbuminemia, in ten other patients showing severe forms of malaria Plasmodium falciparum. The main biological datas of those four cases are summarized below. We made a systematic study of malaria cases, whatever may have been the intensity of parasitemia and clinical symptoms, and whatever the plasmodial species. For 26 non african paludisms , we found an average level of calcemia of 85 mg/l and an average hypoalbuminemia of 37 g/l = 536 mumol/l. For 30 african paludisms we found an average calcemia of 87.5 mg/l. That reduced value is statistically significant comparatively with the average value of 30 african people with no malaria 91.5 mg/l. The problem is to know if this hypocalcemia is connected only with hypoalbuminemia and if it may involve clinical or therapeutical effects.