Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Microbiol Spectr. 2024 Oct 3;12(10):e0096024. doi: 10.1128/spectrum.00960-24. Epub 2024 Aug 20.
parasites, the causative organism of malaria, caused over 600,000 deaths in 2022. In Mali, causes the majority of malaria cases and deaths and is transmitted seasonally. Anti-malarial immunity develops slowly over repeated exposures to and some aspects of this immunity (e.g., antibody titers) wane during the non-transmission, dry season. Here, we sequenced RNA from 33 pediatric blood samples collected during infections at the beginning or end of a transmission season, and characterized the host and parasite gene expression profiles for paired, consecutive infections. We found that human gene expression changes more over the course of one transmission season than between seasons, with signatures of partial development of an adaptive immune response during one transmission season and stability in gene expression during the dry season. Additionally, we found that gene expression did not vary with timing during the season and remained stable both across and between seasons, despite varying human immune pressures. Our results provide insights into the dynamics of anti-malarial immune response development over short time frames that could be exploited by future vaccine and prevention efforts.
Our work seeks to understand how the immune response to malaria changes between infections that occur during low and high malaria transmission seasons, and highlights that immune gene expression changes more during the high transmission season. This provides important insight into the dynamics of the anti-malarial immune response that are important to characterize over these short time frames to better understand how to exploit this immune response with future vaccine efforts.
寄生虫是疟疾的病原体，2022 年导致超过 60 万人死亡。在马里，是导致大多数疟疾病例和死亡的原因，并且季节性传播。抗疟免疫力在反复接触疟原虫时缓慢发展，并且这种免疫力的某些方面（例如抗体滴度）在非传播的旱季会减弱。在这里，我们对 33 份来自儿童血液样本的 RNA 进行了测序，这些样本是在传播季节开始或结束时采集的，对配对的连续感染进行了宿主和寄生虫基因表达谱的特征分析。我们发现，在一个传播季节内，人类基因表达的变化比季节之间的变化更大，在一个传播季节内出现了部分适应性免疫反应的发展特征，而在旱季基因表达则保持稳定。此外，我们发现疟原虫基因表达并不随季节的时间而变化，尽管人类免疫压力不同，但在整个季节和季节之间都保持稳定。我们的研究结果为在短时间内理解抗疟免疫反应发展的动态提供了新的认识，这可能为未来的疫苗和预防工作提供帮助。
我们的工作旨在了解在低和高疟疾传播季节发生的感染之间，对疟原虫的免疫反应如何变化，并强调在高传播季节，免疫基因表达变化更大。这为抗疟免疫反应的动态提供了重要的认识，这些动态在这些短时间内进行特征描述非常重要，以便更好地了解如何利用未来的疫苗工作来利用这种免疫反应。
