Re:Malaria 'Completely Stopped' by Microbe
by tonyarkles on Monday May 04, 2020 @03:58PM
(#23072582)
Yeah that would be curious to investigate for sure!
I can only speak to my own experiences, but while I have observed the phenomenon you describe in preparation for travel/while travelling, Chloroquine dreams were waaaaay more dramatic than anything I've experienced with other travel. I forget what the exact timeline was, but I think I started taking them about a month before departing, and the dreams started about two weeks before departing, and stayed pretty much constant until a few weeks after I'd been home and stopped taking the pills.
I have been prescribed it a number of times. You are supposed to take it for a while after being in a maleria area, or at least I was told to do so. The dreams persisted back home.
The area I was visiting was not so different from other places I had visited or worked, just with a greater chance of maleria and lower chance of getting quick treatment.
In my experience (since I was living there, not really "traveling" at the time) it's not really tied to the travel. For instance, I mostly was stuck in laser rock shows, but like flying through them at high speed. Not particularly an East-African experience.
It'd be interesting to compare to the dreams of people who take the drug without travelling, e.g. medical staff native to malarial regions, who take it as a prophylactic when interacting with malaria-infected patients.