In this month's issue of the freely available online journal
PLoS Medicine , Dr. Thomas N. Williams and colleagues from
Kilifi, Kenya, show that the protection against malaria given by
carrying the gene for sickle cell haemoglobin may involve the
immune system. Studying a group of children and adults in the
Kilifi District of coastal Kenya, they found that this
protection increased during childhood up to age 10, and then
declined. It is estimated that cases of malaria causes
approximately a million deaths yearly, the overwhelming number
of which are young children in sub-Saharan Africa. It has been
known for many years that in those areas most afflicted by
malaria the gene for sickle cell hemoglobin (HbS) occurs very
frequently. The protection against malaria occurs in people who
are heterozygote (HbAS), i.e., have one normal and one sickle
gene, and previous work has suggested that there is an immune
component to this protection. To discover whether the protection
provided by HbAS is innate or varies with ag