Malaria has exerted a major selective pressure for red blood cell (RBC) polymorphisms that confer protection to severe disease. There is a predominance of blood type O in malaria endemic regions, and several lines of evidence suggest that the outcome of Plasmodium falciparum infection may be influenced by ABO blood type antigens. Based on observations that enhanced phagocytosis of infected polymorphic RBCs is associated with protection to malaria in other red cell disorders, we hypothesized that infected type O RBCs may be more efficiently cleared by the innate immune system than infected type A and B RBCs. The present work demonstrates human macrophages in vitro and murine monocytes in vivo phagocytosed P. falciparum infected O RBCs more avidly than infected A and B RBCs independent of macrophage donor blood type. This difference in clearance may confer relative resistance to severe malaria in individuals with blood type O.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/18998 |
| Date | 17 February 2010 |
| Creators | Wolofsky, Kayla |
| Contributors | Kain, Kevin C. |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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