Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Infection and Immunity, May 2006, p. 2726-2733, Vol. 74, No. 5
0019-9567/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.74.5.2726-2733.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Fabiana Piovesan Alves,2,
Carmen Fernandez-Becerra,2
Oliver Pein,2,
Neida Rodrigues Santos,1
Luiz Hildebrando Pereira da Silva,1
Erney Plessman Camargo,2 and
Hernando A. del Portillo2*
Instituto de Pesquisa em Patologias Tropicais, Estrada BR 364-Km 4,5, Porto Velho, Rondônia 78900-000,1 Departamento de Parasitologia, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Lineu Prestes 1374, São Paulo SP 05508-900, Brazil2
Received 20 July 2005/ Returned for modification 29 August 2005/ Accepted 22 February 2006
Progress towards the development of a malaria vaccine against Plasmodium vivax, the most widely distributed human malaria parasite, will require a better understanding of the immune responses that confer clinical protection to patients in regions where malaria is endemic. The occurrence of clinical protection in P. vivax malaria in Brazil was first reported among residents of the riverine community of Portuchuelo, in Rondônia, western Amazon. We thus analyzed immune sera from this same human population to determine if naturally acquired humoral immune responses against the merozoite surface protein 1 of P. vivax, PvMSP1, could be associated with reduced risk of infection and/or clinical protection. Our results demonstrated that this association could be established with anti-PvMSP1 antibodies predominantly of the immunoglobulin G3 subclass directed against the N terminus but not against the C terminus, in spite of the latter being more immunogenic and capable of natural boosting. This is the first report of a prospective study of P. vivax malaria demonstrating an association of reduced risk of infection and clinical protection with antibodies against an antigen of this parasite.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://iai.asm.org/.
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Present address: DKFZ INF 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
This article has been cited by other articles:
Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology. For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»