Researchers at the Institut Pasteur and CNRS, in collaboration with INSERM and University Paris Diderot, showed in mice the role of an inflammatory process in the development of cerebral malaria, one of the manifestations severe malaria that mainly affects young children. This discovery, if confirmed in humans, open up new therapeutic approaches to prevent this disease. This study has just been published on the website of Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Neutrophils expressing on its surface components of high-affinity receptor for IgE (green, red and yellow) in mice infected with Plasmodium
? Institut Pasteur
Cerebral malaria is a very severe form of malaria mainly affects children under five years. This disease, manifested by high fever and convulsions followed by coma, is responsible, when not fatal, serious neurologic sequelae.
A study by the Institut Pasteur and CNRS, in collaboration with INSERM and University Paris Diderot, became interested in how the cerebral malaria occurs when the immune response is poorly controlled in the brain. Led by Salaheddine M?cheri unit Biology of host-parasite interactions at the Pasteur Institute, these studies have demonstrated that the development of cerebral malaria was not directly related to the parasite developing in the red cell but to the setting place a de novo allergic inflammatory process.
In mouse models mimicking the human disease, the researchers showed that the parasite induces the production of a receptor for the antibody immunoglobulin E (IgE), the key players in allergy, a type of white blood cells, neutrophils. However, neutrophils are the immune cells normally devoid of this type of receiver. The couple IgE / receptor thus formed then causes a cascade of inflammatory events causing cerebral malaria.
To confirm this result, the researchers administered the neutrophils with the receptor in mice resistant to cerebral malaria (devoid of this receptor). They were able to confirm that the formation of the couple IgE / receptor was essential for the development of the disease.
This study provides new insights in the understanding of experimental cerebral malaria. Researchers focus now to identify the presence of neutrophils and the mechanism in humans, a breakthrough that would open the way for a potential therapeutic target. Indeed, anti-allergic, directed against the IgE receptor to prevent allergic effects in some individuals, could then be used as preventive treatment against cerebral malaria.
http://www.inserm.fr/espace-journalistes/neuropaludisme-des-mecanismes-de-type-allergique-impliques
Neutrophils expressing on its surface components of high-affinity receptor for IgE (green, red and yellow) in mice infected with Plasmodium
? Institut Pasteur
Cerebral malaria is a very severe form of malaria mainly affects children under five years. This disease, manifested by high fever and convulsions followed by coma, is responsible, when not fatal, serious neurologic sequelae.
A study by the Institut Pasteur and CNRS, in collaboration with INSERM and University Paris Diderot, became interested in how the cerebral malaria occurs when the immune response is poorly controlled in the brain. Led by Salaheddine M?cheri unit Biology of host-parasite interactions at the Pasteur Institute, these studies have demonstrated that the development of cerebral malaria was not directly related to the parasite developing in the red cell but to the setting place a de novo allergic inflammatory process.
In mouse models mimicking the human disease, the researchers showed that the parasite induces the production of a receptor for the antibody immunoglobulin E (IgE), the key players in allergy, a type of white blood cells, neutrophils. However, neutrophils are the immune cells normally devoid of this type of receiver. The couple IgE / receptor thus formed then causes a cascade of inflammatory events causing cerebral malaria.
To confirm this result, the researchers administered the neutrophils with the receptor in mice resistant to cerebral malaria (devoid of this receptor). They were able to confirm that the formation of the couple IgE / receptor was essential for the development of the disease.
This study provides new insights in the understanding of experimental cerebral malaria. Researchers focus now to identify the presence of neutrophils and the mechanism in humans, a breakthrough that would open the way for a potential therapeutic target. Indeed, anti-allergic, directed against the IgE receptor to prevent allergic effects in some individuals, could then be used as preventive treatment against cerebral malaria.
http://www.inserm.fr/espace-journalistes/neuropaludisme-des-mecanismes-de-type-allergique-impliques