Malaria remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, despite decades of public health efforts. The recent commitment by many endemic countries to eliminate malaria marks a shift away from programs aimed at controlling disease burden towards one that emphasizes reducing transmission of the most virulent human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Gametocytes, the only developmental s...

Lipoic acid (LA) is a dithiol-containing cofactor that is essential for the function of alpha-keto acid dehydrogenase complexes. LA acts as a reversible acyl group acceptor and 'swinging arm' during acyl-coenzyme A formation. The cofactor is post-translationally attached to the acyl-transferase subunits of the multienzyme complexes through the action of octanoyl (lipoyl): N-octanoyl (lipoyl) tr...

The malaria parasite, Plasmodium, is one of the oldest parasites documented to infect humans and has proven particularly hard to eradicate. One of the major hurdles in designing an effective subunit vaccine against the malaria parasite is the insufficient understanding of host-parasite interactions within the human host during infections. The success of the parasite lies in its ability to evade...

Malaria transmission is perennial in Southwest Cameroon with seasonal increases during the rainy season, and varies with levels of urbanization [1]. The disease is also a major contributor to anaemia and may have profound consequences on learning and educational achievement of school age children [2]. Some studies have suggested that poor environmental sanitation and housing conditions. as well...

Sequestration of red blood cells infected with the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in organs such as the brain is considered important for pathogenicity. A similar phenomenon has been observed in mouse models of malaria, using the rodent parasite Plasmodium berghei, but it is unclear whether the P. falciparum proteins known to be involved in this process are conserved in the rodent...

Malaria parasites are unicellular organisms residing inside the red blood cells, and current methods for editing the parasite genes have been inefficient. The CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and Cas9 endonuclease-mediated genome editing) system is a new powerful technique for genome editing and has been widely employed to study gene function in various org...

It seems obvious that the number of pathogens should be important in the pathogenesis of an infectious disease [1,2]. The relationship between the pathogen load and severity is one of the most fundamental questions, and yet, strangely, one of the most difficult to answer [3]. One reason for this is that it is often rather difficult to determine the total pathogen load in an infected host, parti...

Malaria remains o n e o f the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in tropical countries, and the alarming spread of the drugs resistant malaria parasite underscores the need to develop new antimalarial compounds. In this study, the phytochemical constituents, in vivo antiplasmodial, and cytotoxic activity of methanolic extracts of Achyranthes aspera and Ficus thoningii were evaluated usin...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The present study was undertaken to assess the prevalence of malaria parasitaemia among blood donors and to determine the possible risk of transmission of malaria parasite to recipients of blood in Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Anambra State. METHODS Four hundred and forty-four subjects were selected randomly and EDTA added blood was collected for...

Plasmodium sporozoites, the mosquito-transmitted forms of the malaria parasite, first infect the liver for an initial round of replication before the emergence of pathogenic blood stages. Sporozoites represent attractive targets for antimalarial preventive strategies, yet the mechanisms of parasite entry into hepatocytes remain poorly understood. Here we show that the two main species causing m...