Cerebellar syndrome in Plasmodium falciparum malaria.
Sir,

There are reports in the literature of patients with P. falciparum malaria presenting without impairment of consciousness but with signs of cerebellar dysfunction.1 Most of these cases have been reported from the Indian subcontinent. Cerebellar ataxia is also commonly reported in cerebral malaria survivors after recovery from coma in both children and adults. More recently, a syndrome of delayed cerebellar ataxia (DCA) has also been described from Sri Lanka and India in which ataxia developed after an afebrile period of a few days to weeks after an attack of fever attributable to P. falciparum malaria.1–,4

In this prospective hospital-based clinical study of 3188 adult patients with P. falciparum malaria admitted to the PBM hospital attached to S.P. Medical College Bikaner (Rajasthan) India between January 1992 and June 1998, cerebellar syndrome was observed …