May 15, 2011 A team of researchers have found that pre-existing
malaria prevents secondary infection by another Plasmodium
strain, the parasite responsible for malaria, by restricting
iron availability in the liver of the host. This discovery was
published on May 15 in Nature Medicine and has important
implications for the management and prevention of malaria, a
condition which affects millions of individuals worldwide. The
study was developed by the team led by researcher Maria M. Mota
at Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon, Portugal, in
collaboration with researchers at the Weatherall Institute of
Molecular Medicine and Oxford University; and was funded by the
Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, European
Science Foundation and Medical Research Council, UK. In this
current study, the researchers focused at how malaria parasites
developed in both the liver and in red blood cells and analysed
patterns of infection in mice, looking in particular at cases of
'superinfection', in which an indiv