immunity

Radiation-attenuated Plasmodium sporozoites (RAS) are the only vaccine shown to induce sterilizing protection against malaria in both humans and rodents.

Here, we have employed transgenic Plasmodium berghei parasites in which the endogenous CSP was replaced by that of Plasmodium yoelii, another rodent malaria species, to assess the role of CSP in the sterile protection induced by the Spz-plus-CQ protocol.

This approach, if validated in larger studies and in other epidemiological settings, could prove to be a useful strategy for better understanding fundamental properties of the human immune response to Pf and for identifying previously undescribed vaccine targets.

 
In this article, we highlight our current understanding of these variant antigens and provide insights on the mechanisms developed by malaria parasites to effectively avoid the host immune response and establish chronic infection.

This review gives an overview of the erythrocyte invasion process, which has been described to include several different antigens.

CB6F1 mice infected with the nonlethal Plasmodium chabaudi chabaudi AS suffer parasitaemia levels up to 40% (full parasitaemia, FP) and develop both homologous and heterologous (against the lethal Plasmodium yoelii 17XL) protective immunity.

We show that a peroxidase, secreted by the Anopheles gambiae midgut, and dual oxidase form a dityrosine network that decreases gut permeability to immune elicitors.

CB6F1 mice infected with the nonlethal Plasmodium chabaudi chabaudi AS suffer parasitaemia levels up to 40% (full parasitaemia, FP) and develop both homologous and heterologous (against the lethal Plasmodium yoelii 17XL) protective immunity.

In conclusion, this report suggests a protective effect for IgG subclasses to Pf332-C231 antigen against malaria.

We discuss the implications of our results for understanding prevalence patterns in long-term malaria datasets from Kenya that show multi-annual cycles and one from Thailand that does not and discuss the possible implications of treatment.