摘要Objective:Malaria remains the single leading killer of children in sub -Sahara Africa and Schistosomiasis is considered to be second to malaria in global importance.Co -infection of malaria and urinary schistosomiasis has been reported to exacerbate disease morbidity such as anaemia.In different part of the globe,the co -in-fection between malaria and schistosomiasis provides some protections on the infected persons.The protective effect of this co -infection elucidated immunologically using cytokines is lacking in our locality.Methods:U-rine and blood samples obtained from the 160 volunteers were subjected to standard parasitological techniques for diagnosis of urinary schistosomiasis and malaria respectively.Blood samples collected from these volunteers comprising 80 children with schistosomiasis and malaria and the 80 children who had malaria only were subjec-ted to cytokines concentration determination using commercial standard enzyme linked immunosorbent assay kits (Abcam,UK).Results:Eighty participants with co -infection had a mean malarial parasitaemia of 662 ±201.1 μL while the 80 participants with only P.falciparum malaria had a mean malarial parasiteamia of 5943 ±3270.7μL.Also the volunteers had mean haemoglobin of 11.2 g/dL for co -infected individuals and 5.7 g/dL for participants with single infection of malaria.The serum cytokine levels of the children with S. haematobium and P.falciparum and only P.falciparum infection are as follows;interleukin -4 (16.6 pg/mL versus 5.2 pg/mL),IL -5 (501.3 pg/mL versus 357.5 pg/mL);IL -8 (2 550 pg/mL versus 309 pg/mL),IL -10 (273 pg/mL versus 290 pg/mL),TNF -α(25 pg/mL versus 290 pg/mL)and IFN -γ(21.9 pg/mL versus 2.5 pg/mL).The TNF -α/IL -10 ratio is 7 for the children with co -infection while those with only P.falciparum malaria infection had a TNF -α/IL -10 ratio of 0.9.Conclusion:We con-clude that the elevated IL -4,IL -5,IL -8 and IFN -γconcentration induced by schistosomiasis altered the Th1 /Th 2 profile and protected the children against the morbidity and severity of malaria attack among the chil-dren with co -infection.