Malaria: new ideas, old problems, new technologies

摘要

This meeting covered new developments in malaria research and technical advances that may considerably accelerate the rate of progress in the future. An intriguing and controversial presentation from the laboratory of I. Landau (Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France) given by G. Snounou (Imperial College, London, UK) concemed a possible new stage in the life cycle of rodent malarial parasites, termed the 'merophore'. The prolonged survival of the parasite in the face of protective host immune responses has always been something of a mystery (despite antigenic variation) especially, for example, in Plasmodium malariae infections. Landau's group presented pictures of schizonts and merozoites in macrophages and neutrophils and within lymphatic tissue. This may be surprising to those with experience only of merozoites entering red blood cells, but is reminiscent of the parasite life cycle in the avian malarias. Clearly, this topic is going to be debated for some time.