Abstract:
Malaria is a common and serious tropical disease caused by protozoan
infection. In humans, Plasmodim vivax is the second most prevalent species that
causes relapsing infection. Host immunity induced by P. vivax compared with that of
P. falciparum infection leads to memory T cell recruitment during “relapse” or “reinfection”.
In order to understand the mechanism of host immune response against
P. vivax, this thesis aims to characterize memory T cells in patients with acute or
convalescent P. vivax infection. Lymphocytes were collected from patients infected by
P. vivax, immune controls and malaria naive controls. The proportion of immature
memory T cells, expressing CD45RO+CD27+, and mature cells lacking CD27 was
assessed. A statistically significant increase [P<0.05] in the median percentage of
memory T cell subsets expressing CD4+ was observed in the blood from patients with
acute infection and compared with that from either naive or immune controls. The
high percentage of memory T cells in infected patients was maintained until 60 days
post treatment. The immune controls living in the malaria endemic area had somewhat
increased level of memory T cell subsets expressing CD8+. Approximately, a threefold
increase of this cell type was shown in the patients with acute infection and the
level persisted until 60 days post treatment. Phenotyping of the peripheral
lymphocytes during acute infection revealed that a large fraction of the lymphocytes
carried the γδ phenotypes suggesting a role for these cells in the early response against
P. vivax. Very low levels of P. vivax specific antibody were found among the malaria
experienced individuals in this study. This might suggest that cell-mediated immunity
may play a greater role in the development of naturally acquired immunity against
P.vivax infection than the humoral immunity. Our results provide a further insight into
the mechanism of cell-mediated immunity to P. vivax infection that could be important
for the future development of a successful vaccine and anti-malarial drug designs.