Respiratory signs are common in African children where malaria is highly endemic and, thus, parsing the role of pulmonary pathology in illness is challenging. We examined the lungs of 100 children from an autopsy series in Blantyre, Malawi, in many of whom death was attributed to P falciparum malaria. Our aim was to describe the pathological manifestations of fatal malaria, to understand the role of parasites, pigment, and macrophages, and to catalogue co-morbidities. From available patients which included 55 patients with cerebral malaria and 45 controls, we obtained 4 cores of lung tissue for immunohistochemistry and morphological evaluation. We found that in patients with cerebral malaria, large numbers of malaria parasites were present in pulmonary alveolar capillaries, together with extensive deposits of malaria pigment (hemozoin). The number of pulmonary macrophages in this vascular bed did not differ between patients with cerebral malaria, non-cerebral malaria and non-malarial diagnoses. Co-morbidities found in some cerebral malaria patients included pneumonia, pulmonary edema, hemorrhage, and systemic activation of coagulation. We conclude that the respiratory distress seen in patients with cerebral malaria does not appear to be anatomic in origin but that increasing malaria pigment is strongly associated with cerebral malaria at autopsy.

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