WASHINGTON -- Treating fever with aspirin or other anti-inflammatory drugs could be key to helping patients recover from attacks of malaria, researchers said on Monday.

The parasite that causes malaria seems to do more damage when patients have fevers than when they have normal body temperatures, the team of scientists in Thailand and Britain reported.

The study, published in **** The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences****, is in contrast to studies of other diseases that suggest fever is the body's natural mechanism for fighting infection.

Malaria is marked by a high fever, and doctors often treat this symptom first. But some recent studies had suggested that lowering a patient's temperature might interfere with the body's ability to clear out the tiny parasites that cause the disease.

"This interpretation has created a therapeutic dilemma for the health worker, as reducing fever also has potentially beneficial effects on reducing seizure risk," Reuters quoted the researchers, led by Nicholas White of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, as writing in their report.

The researchers tested the blood of 12 patients treated at Mahidol University Hospital in Bangkok, all of whom had acute malaria infections.

At one stage in its life cycle the malaria parasite attacks red blood cells. It can make the cells stick to the walls of blood vessels, which can cut off blood flow to vital organs.

They heated the blood to temperatures found in fever.

The hotter the blood was, the researchers found, the stickier the infected red blood cells were. At a normal body temperature of 98.6 degrees (37 degrees C), the blood cells hardly stuck at all.

This helps explain why patients become so ill during certain stages of infection, the researchers said, and also will help doctors decide how to treat patients with malaria.