Highly significant values of Hp is observed in the MRM assay that show a correlation with severity of malaria and is clearly distinguished from another febrile disease, dengue.
This epistatic interaction together with varying frequencies of α(+)thalassemia across Africa may explain the inconsistent relationship between Hp genotype and malaria reported in previous studies.
Haptoglobin levels have been repeatedly associated with a variety of inflammation-linked infectious and non-infectious diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis, human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis C, diabetes, carotid atherosclerosis, and acute myocardial infarction.
Iron and infection: effects of host iron status and the iron-regulatory genes haptoglobin and NRAMP1 (SLC11A1) on host-pathogen interactions in tuberculosis and HIV.
Children with the haptoglobin 2-2 genotype (17%) had a greater mean drop in Hb level over the malaria season (an 8.9 g/l drop; confidence interval [CI] 5.7, 12.1) compared to other children (a 5.1 g/l drop; CI 3.8, 6.4).
CRP and haptoglobin are simple and inexpensive to measure in large numbers of people, and these results suggest that they could be useful for the assessment of malaria intervention programmes.
Long-term studies of 98 unselected adults from a rural African community in Mali where malaria is endemic showed that the haptoglobin level of the blood increased significantly after 1 year of continuous anti-malarial treatment.