MALARIA foils the immune system by making our red blood cells stick to key
immune cells, say researchers in Oxford.
Britta Urban and David Roberts of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and
their colleagues found that red cells infected with the malaria parasite
Plasmodium falciparum produce proteins that make them stick to dendritic
cells (Nature, vol 400, p 73).
Clogging up dendritic cells prevents them alerting the T cells that usually
fight off invaders, effectively sabotaging the body鈥檚 immune response. The
sticky proteins act 鈥渘ot just to avoid the immune system, but to shut it down鈥�,
says Urban.
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