This study reports the epidemiological characteristics of imported malaria diagnosed at a tertiary care centre for infectious diseases in Prague, Czech Republic. Among the main strengths of this study are the relatively high number of included patients and the long study period, which enables the identification of potential changes in the epidemiology of imported malaria in Eastern European settings. However, the observations of this single-centre retrospective analysis require confirmation from more powerful multi-centre studies that should include Central and Eastern European countries. Therefore, this study is also a bid for broader cooperation and partnership among all European centres for imported tropical infectious diseases.
Among the main findings of this study is the steadily increasing incidence of malaria cases imported to the Czech Republic in recent years. Moreover, this rise is primarily attributed to P. falciparum malaria, which has the most potential to cause severe disease. These observations can be explained mainly by an increasing proportion of travellers returning from sub-Saharan Africa, which accounted for nearly all malaria cases from 2016 to 2019. Tourism is no longer the most prevalent reason for travel in recent years, and there is an increasing trend in the proportions of the other types of travellers. Travellers for business and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tended to travel for longer periods, significantly increasing their exposure to malaria. Other studies have shown that non-tourism reasons for travel are associated with lower adherence to anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis [6]. VFR travellers more often visit remote rural areas and use less mosquito bite prevention. Modern pre-travel advice practices should reflect these essential changes in the profile of travellers to malaria-endemic areas.
The low adherence rates to anti-malarials in this study are troubling but not surprising. At least in part, this may be explained by selection bias, as the study only evaluated patients who acquired malaria during their travel, thus lacking the denominator. However, insufficient adherence to anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis is a global problem described in several studies [6, 16]. In addition, this study assessed the adequacy of the patients' drug regimens used for anti-malarial prophylaxis. Not surprisingly, there was a substantial proportion of travellers who reported taking anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis were either taking a non-recommended drug or did not complete their course. These data are particularly of value since such patients may be falsely reported as adherent to anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis in other studies, which only assess binary data (i.e., "yes/no") collected via questionnaires or national reporting systems. Therefore, pre-travel clinics and preventive healthcare providers should be aware of the current recommendations for anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis alongside the trends in malaria resistance patterns to assist patients in selecting the optimal drug.
The number of studies on the epidemiology of travel-acquired malaria conducted in the Central European region remains low. According to the ECDC, the notification rate of malaria in the Czech Republic has ranged between 3 and 4 cases per 1 million population in recent years. Stępień published a report on the epidemiology of imported malaria in Poland in 2014–2018 and a comparison with previous years [17]. Poland is a country with a population over 3,5 greater than that of the Czech Republic. However, only 141 imported malaria cases were reported during the study period, which accounts for the notification rate of 0.7 cases per 1 million population. Similar figures have been reported for Slovakia and Hungary. However, no detailed epidemiological and clinical data from these countries are available. Imported malaria in Austria is approximately three times as frequent as in the Czech Republic, with a notification rate of 8 to 9 cases per 1 million population annually [11, 16]. Strauss et al. reported epidemiological data on 924 malaria cases imported to Austria between 1990 and 2000. The main findings are similar to this study’s: poor adherence to anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis in international travellers and the increasing proportion of P. falciparum infections. Vygen-Bonnet et al. reported a sharp increase in imported malaria cases had been documented in Germany in recent years, reflecting both the increasing number of newly arriving refugees and a rising trend in malaria acquisition by native Germans traveling to malaria-endemic countries [18]. Particularly of note is the growing proportion of non-touristic reasons for travel (including work, education, training, and VFR). A similar trend was observed in this study, albeit to a smaller extent. Considering ongoing globalization and increasing numbers of people, who work and live abroad, a similar development may be expected in the Czech Republic. High proportions of imported malaria in VFR and business travellers are particularly characteristic of Western European and Northern American centres [19,20,21,22,23].
The initial signs and symptoms of patients with malaria are notoriously non-specific. Notably, both patients with non-complicated and severe P. falciparum malaria tended to present more commonly with gastrointestinal symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, than patients with non-falciparum malaria. The exact prevalence of diarrhoea and other GI symptoms in malaria remains unclear. However, an association with higher parasitaemia has been suggested by other studies [24, 25]. The most frequent complications of severe malaria included acute respiratory distress syndrome, septic shock, altered mental status, coagulopathy, and acute kidney injury. The overall case fatality ratio was 1%, which is similar to the numbers reported in other European countries [11, 17, 18]. Of note, patients who developed severe diseases tended to be older and present significantly later from symptom onset (median 4 days vs 2 days in non-complicated malaria). Treatment delay has been shown to significantly increase the risk of progression to severe disease in the a recently published meta-analysis [14]. In this study, patients with co-morbidities were not shown to have an increased risk of severe malaria. This is consistent with the literature review by Lüthi et al. [26], which showed that top risk factors associated with malaria deaths in travellers include non-use or incorrect use of anti-malarial chemoprophylaxis, older age, delay in seeking medical care and male sex, but not medical co-morbidities. The impact of gender on the development of severe disease was not directly addressed in this study. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the overall proportion of male patients with malaria considerably exceeded that of female patients. This disparity is indicated in most malaria case series, and the exact reasons are unknown but may be related to behavioural factors (i. e., lower risk perception, non-adherence to preventive measures by male travellers) or sex-related differences in the biological responses to malaria [27,28,29].
The most frequent laboratory findings included low platelet counts, mildly elevated liver enzymes and markedly elevated CRP. Anaemia is often mentioned among the classical laboratory findings in malaria, but this was not frequently observed in this study. This may be associated with the earlier presentation and lower parasite burdens in this study, as anaemia tends to be a relatively late manifestation, particularly common in patients with severe disease or individuals living in endemic areas suffering frequent reinfections [30,31,32].
In this study, vivax malaria was the most common non-falciparum malaria and the most important species acquired outside Sub-Saharan Africa (particularly in Asia and Latin America). While infections with P. vivax are rarely severe, two crucial clinical considerations should be accounted for. First, while chloroquine is still the drug of choice in most cases of non-falciparum malaria, the resistance of P. vivax has been documented and may be on the rise [33]. Therefore, chloroquine resistance should be suspected in travellers returning from Southeast Asia or Oceania (notably, the island of New Guinea), but also in any patient with delayed clearance or early recurrence of parasitaemia. Second, treatment of P. vivax infection always requires the eradication of liver hypnozoites with primaquine to prevent relapses of latent infection. There were five cases of recurrent disease caused by P. vivax in the present study. However, reinfection could not be reliably excluded in these cases.
Artemisinin-based combinations represent the treatment of choice for P. falciparum malaria and chloroquine-resistant non-falciparum malaria and a treatment option for chloroquine-susceptible non-malaria [34]. Infections with unknown species and particularly any severe malaria should be treated as for P. falciparum infection, regardless of species diagnosis. Combination therapy is now recommended to reduce the risk of selecting for resistant parasite species, as artemisinin resistance was observed in the regions where monotherapy had been previously used (Cambodia, Thailand, Guyana) [35,36,37]. In this study, most cases of non-complicated P. falciparum malaria were treated with artemether/lumefantrine, the most widely used artemisinin-based combination globally [38]. Artemether typically leads to rapid clinical and parasitological responses several hours after administration and has a very short plasma elimination half-life of about 2 hours. Lumefantrine is lipophilic. Its absorption is limited in the acute phase of illness and may be increased severalfold by taking the drug together with fat-containing food. With its longer half-life, lumefantrine serves to clear any residual parasites after the rapid clearance produced by artemether and protect the partner drug from resistance [39]. However, treatment with artemisinin derivatives (mainly when used in monotherapy) has been associated with frequent treatment failures and recrudescence of symptomatic malaria. The rate of recrudescence observed in this study was 4.7%, which is high compared to other studies [40, 41]. This may be caused by insufficient absorption of artemether-lumefantrine, as recommendations to take the drug with a fatty meal were not followed in all patients, particularly during the earlier periods of the study. However, another explanation may be related to the high proportion of non-immune travellers of European origin in this study. According to the findings of a retrospective study from Sweden late treatment failures may be more common in this population [42]. This problem requires further investigation of possible dose adjustments, extended treatment regimens or alternative ACT combinations. Most cases of treatment failure do not indicate true resistance but rather a form of parasite persistence via non-specific phylogenetically old mechanisms for evasion of toxins [43]. WHO currently recommends that all patients with recurrent infection ≤ 28 days following treatment be treated with an alternative Artemisinin-based combiations known to be effective in the region [34]. The QUINACT trial has shown similar efficacy in re-treating recurrent uncomplicated malaria in African children with the same artemisinin-based combination compared to alternative combinations or quinine plus clindamycin [44]. However, more randomized trials and data for adult patients are needed to corroborate these findings. Artemether/lumefantrine remains the only artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) option available in the Czech Republic. Hence the standard practice has been to treat recrudescent P. falciparum malaria with a different class drug (i.e., mefloquine or atovaquone/proguanil). Quinine (with clindamycin) is still widely used in Europe to treat severe P. falciparum malaria, although randomized trials have shown a clear mortality benefit of intravenous artesunate over quinine [45, 46]. Intravenous artesunate has been designated orphan by the European Medicines Agency. Nevertheless, it has not been granted marketing authorization, and only a few countries have sufficient legal framework available for physicians to prescribe the drug [47, 48].
The main limitations of this single-centre retrospective descriptive study are related to the patient population and data availability. This study included only symptomatic cases diagnosed in acute care settings. Therefore, patients with a clinically inapparent disease or those diagnosed and treated abroad are underrepresented in the study population. In addition, the PCR confirmation and species differentiation were not performed in most cases. As a result, some hidden mixed infections or submicroscopic parasitaemias may have been missed. Finally, the study site lacked the necessary resources for molecular surveillance and investigation of the epidemiologically relevant genetic polymorphisms in P. falciparum. A prospective study with data from multiple centres across the country is required to fully describe the epidemiology and clinical spectrum of imported malaria.
