Immune Escape Strategies of Malaria Parasites

Abstract

Malaria is one of the most life-threatening infectious diseases worldwide. Immunity to malaria is slow and short-lived despite the repeated parasite exposure in endemic areas. Malaria parasites have evolved refined machinery to evade the immune system based on a range of genetic changes that include allelic variation, biomolecular exposure of proteins, and intracellular replication. All of these features increase the probability of survival in both mosquitoes and the vertebrate host. Plasmodium species escape from the first immunological trap in its invertebrate vector host, the Anopheles mosquitoes. The parasites have to pass through various immunological barriers within the mosquito such as anti-microbial molecules and the mosquito microbiota in order to achieve successful transmission to the vertebrate host. Within these hosts, Plasmodium species employ various immune evasion strategies during different life cycle stages. Parasite persistence against the vertebrate immune response depends on the balance among virulence factors, pathology, metabolic cost of the host immune response, and the parasites ability to evade the immune response. In this review we discuss the strategies that Plasmodium parasites use to avoid the vertebrate host immune system and how they promote successful infection and transmission.

Correlation of APRIL with production of inflammatory cytokines during acute malaria in the Brazilian Amazon

“…Regarding B‐cells, a number of observations clearly demonstrate that B‐cell homeostasis is affected by Plasmodium infection . This can be attributed to the complex biology of the parasites , their antigenic diversity , and their immune‐modulatory molecules . The BAFF/APRIL system plays a variety of roles in immunomodulation, mainly by affecting B cell activation, proliferation, and survival.…”

“…Plasmodium infection [17,18,44,45]. This can be attributed to the complex biology of the parasites [46,47], their antigenic diversity [46][47][48], and their immune-modulatory molecules [49,50]. The BAFF/APRIL system plays a variety of roles in immunomodulation, mainly by affecting B cell activation, proliferation, and survival.…”

Structure-function and application of plant lectins in disease biology and immunity

“…This is because of the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of different bacteria against the prevailing drugs that has spread all over the world (Davies and Davies, 2010). Moreover, pathogens have also evolved many strategies to circumvent host immune defences and in turn induce excessive inflammation resulting in the injury of host tissue (Chaves et al, 2016;Gomes et al, 2016). Hence, to tackle this situation efficiently, discovery of new antimicrobial drugs that can modulate the host immune response upon microbial infection without directly targeting the microbes is urgently needed.…”

Renal Localization of Plasmodium vivax and Zoonotic Monkey Parasite Plasmodium knowlesi in Malaria Associated Acute Kidney Injury

“…Several studies have explored the potential of P. vivax to cytoadhere to host endothelial cells and have found in vitro evidence of low affinity binding [12,23,24]. We have addressed the question of tissue localization of P. vivax and the other four human malaria parasites in malaria-associated acute kidney injury (AKI).…”