Plasmodium falciparum

Interventions using current tools can result in major reductions in P. falciparum malaria transmission and the associated disease burden in Africa. Reduction to the 1% parasite prevalence threshold is possible in low- to moderate-transmission settings when vectors are primarily endophilic (indoor-resting), provided a comprehensive and sustained intervention program is achieved through roll-out of interventions.

Increasing prevalence of the dhfr triple mutant and dhps double mutant genotypes in Africa are consistent with the loss of efficacy of SP for treatment of clinical malaria in most parts of this continent.

Our assay provides a number of technical improvements that facilitate the high-throughput screening of patient samples to identify SP-resistant malaria.

IPTi-SP appears to have no impact on the multiplicity of infection during infancy and thereafter. This suggests that tolerance of multiple infections, a component of protective immunity in highly endemic areas, is not affected by this intervention.

Because these results suggest that infected mosquitoes may incur fitness costs under natural-like conditions, they are particularly relevant to vector control strategies aiming at boosting naturally occurring refractoriness or spreading natural or foreign genes for refractoriness using genetic drive systems in vector populations.

Immunization with PfCelTOS resulted in potent humoral and cellular immune responses and most importantly induced sterile protection against a heterologous challenge with P. berghei sporozoites in a proportion of both inbred and outbred mice.

Both cell cycle delay and induced gene expression represent potentially important mechanisms for parasites to escape the effect of the antimalarial drug.

This study predicted 14 and confirmed nine MHC class I-restricted CD8+ T cell epitopes on AMA1 recognized in the context of seven HLA alleles. These HLA alleles belong to four HLA supertypes that have a phenotypic frequency between 23% - 100% in different human populations.

Human malaria is caused by four human-host restricted or adapted species of the genus Plasmodium, listed here in their order of risk for causing severe disease Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium malariae – or so we thought.

There was a considerable reduction of the proportion of malaria among fevers over time in Africa. This decline provides evidence for the policy change from presumptive anti-malarial treatment of all children with fever to laboratory diagnosis and treatment upon result.