Long-lived antibody and B Cell memory responses to the human malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Antibodies constitute a critical component of the naturally acquired immunity that develops following frequent exposure to malaria. However, specific antibody titres have been reported to decline rapidly in the absence of reinfection, supporting the widely perceived notion that malaria infections fail to induce durable immunological memory responses. Currently, direct evidence for the presence or absence of immune memory to malaria is limited. In this study, we analysed the longevity of both antibody and B cell memory responses to malaria antigens among individuals who were living in an area of extremely low malaria transmission in northern Thailand, and who were known either to be malaria naive or to have had a documented clinical attack of P. falciparum and/or P. vivax in the past 6 years. We found that exposure to malaria results in the generation of relatively avid antigen-specific antibodies and the establishment of populations of antigen-specific memory B cells in a significant proportion of malaria-exposed individuals. Both antibody and memory B cell responses to malaria antigens were stably maintained over time in the absence of reinfection. In a number of cases where antigen-specific antibodies were not detected in plasma, stable frequencies of antigen-specific memory B cells were nonetheless observed, suggesting that circulating memory B cells may be maintained independently of long-lived plasma cells. We conclude that infrequent malaria infections are capable of inducing long-lived antibody and memory B cell responses.
Date Issued
2010
Citation
PLoS Pathog, 2010, 6 (2), pp.e1000770-
ISSN
1553-7374
Start Page
e1000770
Journal / Book Title
PLoS Pathog
Volume
6
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
©2010 Wipasa et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Identifier
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=20174609
Subjects
Adult Antibodies, Protozoan/blood/*immunology Antigens, Protozoan/immunology B-Lymphocytes/*immunology Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay Female Humans *Immunologic Memory Malaria, Falciparum/blood/*immunology Malaria, Vivax/blood/*immunology Male Middle Aged Plasmodium falciparum/immunology Plasmodium vivax/immunology Thailand Young Adult
Notes
Long-lived antibody and B Cell memory responses to the human malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax Wipasa, Jiraprapa Suphavilai, Chaisuree Okell, Lucy C Cook, Jackie Corran, Patrick H Thaikla, Kanitta Liewsaree, Witaya Riley, Eleanor M Hafalla, Julius Clemence R Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't United States PLoS pathogens PLoS Pathog. 2010 Feb 19;6(2):e1000770. eng