Psychiatric effects of malaria and anti malarial drugs: historical and modern perspectives
The modern medical literature implicates malaria, and particularly the potentially fatal form of cerebral malaria, with a risk of neurocognitive impairment. Yet historically, even milder forms of malaria were associated in the literature with a broad range of psychiatric effects, including disorders of personality, mood, memory, attention, thought, and behaviour. In this article, the history of psychiatric effects attributed to malaria and post malaria syndromes is reviewed, and insights from the historical practice of malariotherapy in contributing to understanding of these effects are considered. This review concludes with a discussion of the potentially confounding role of the adverse effects of anti malarial drugs, particularly of the quinoline class, in the unique attribution of certain psychiatric effects to malaria, and of the need for a critical reevaluation of the literature in light of emerging evidence of the chronic nature of these adverse drug effects.
Malaria Journal