Individuals living in regions of intense malaria transmission exhibit natural immunity that facilitates persistence of parasitemia at controlled densities for much of the time without symptoms. This aspect of immunity has been referred to as malarial "tolerance" and is thought to partly involve inhibition of the chain of events initiated by a parasite toxin(s) that may otherwise result in cytok...

Predicting antibody pair performance in a sandwich format streamlines development of antibody-based diagnostics and laboratory research tools, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) and lateral flow immunoassays (LFAs). We have evaluated panels of monoclonal antibodies against the malarial parasite biomarker Plasmodium falciparum histidine rich protein 2 (HRP2), including 9 new mon...

Parasite-derived glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) is believed to be a major inducer of the pathways leading to pathology and morbidity during Plasmodium falciparum infection and has been termed a malaria "toxin." The generation of neutralizing anti-GPI ("antitoxic") antibodies has therefore been hypothesized to be an important step in the acquisition of antidisease immunity to malaria; howeve...

Rhoptry-associated protein 1 (RAP1) of Plasmodium falciparum is a nonpolymorphic merozoite antigen that is considered a potential candidate for a malaria vaccine against asexual blood stages. In this longitudinal study, recombinant RAP1 (rRAP1) proteins with antigenicity similar to that of P. falciparum-derived RAP1 were used to analyze antibody responses to RAP1 over a period of 4 years (1991 ...

Severe malarial anemia (SMA) is a primary cause of morbidity and mortality in immune-naïve infants and young children residing in areas of holoendemic Plasmodium falciparum transmission. Although the immunopathogenesis of SMA is largely undefined, we have previously shown that systemic interleukin-12 (IL-12) production is suppressed during childhood blood-stage malaria. Since IL-10 and tumor ne...

Background.  Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection reduces placental transfer of antibodies from mother to the fetus for many antigens; however, conflicting data exist for transfer of immunoglobulin G (IgG) to malarial antigens. The mechanism(s) underlying reduced placental transfer is unknown. Methods.  Levels of maternal and cord total IgG, IgG subclasses, and cord-to-mother ratios (CM...

BACKGROUND Malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum remains a major cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. Immunity against symptoms of malaria requires repeated exposure, suggesting either that the parasite is poorly immunogenic or that the development of effective immune responses to malaria may be impaired. METHODS We carried out two age-stratified cross-sectional surveys of anti-malarial hu...