In course of the disease progression, malarial parasites growing in the erythrocytes degrade hemoglobin and generate reactive oxygen species (ROS), which lead to increased oxidative stress within the erythrocytes and outside the parasitized cells. As a result, to circumvent the situation, enhanced plasma levels of antioxidant defense associated enzymes/proteins such as superoxide dismutase-1 (SOD-1) are observed in acute malaria patients [25] . In both FM and VM patients we have identified elevated serum level of hemopexin, a heme-binding protein, which provides the second line of defense against hemoglobin-mediated oxidative damage during intravascular hemolysis [26] . Increased production of this acute phase protein by the host defense system could be helpful to circumvent the pro-inflammatory response with oxidative stress generated in patients with Pf or Pv infection. In contrast, haptoglobin (Hp) found to be significantly downregulated in FM and VM patients. Hp removes free hemoglobin (Hb) released during parasite induced hemolysis, and disappears as the Hp-Hb complexes leading to the malaria associated hypo-or ahaptoglobinemia and is a promising inflammatory marker to evaluate the severity of the Plasmodium infection [21] . Earlier reports have demonstrated the possible role of this APP as an epidemiological marker for malaria [21, 27] .