A study listed in MalariaWorld this week found that adherence to a ‘fat and vitamin A’ dietary pattern was inversely associated with the chance of clinical malaria. ‘Associations Between Climate- Sensitive Nutrients, Clinical Malaria, and Anaemia Among Young Children in Rural Burkina Faso: An Analysis of Baseline Data From a Cluster- Randomised Controlled Trial’ by Kurniawan et al in Tropical Medicine & International Health, examined the effect of ‘fat and vitamin A’ and ‘fibre and micronutrient’ dietary patterns on the incidence of malaria and anaemia in children aged 6–23 months in Nouna, Burkina Faso.
No significant effects were found on the occurrence of anaemia or of the ‘fibre and micronutrient’ dietary pattern. While the diets of all children in the study relied on carbohydrate based foods for the majority of calories, those on the ‘vitamin A and fat’ pattern were more frequent consumers of yellow and orange fleshed fruits and vegetables and animal-based foods, such as red meat and eggs.
There is evidence that the occurrence of malaria disappears as the wealth and diet of a country improves. This study of a high-risk population in Burkina Faso gives some statistical evidence of how this could be so.