Fatal Forms of Malaria Identified by Protein Biomarkers

Canadian researchers have identified protein biomarkers that could facilitate easy diagnosis of two severe and debilitating forms of malaria.

With the findings, scientists have shed new light on the development two crippling malaria variations - one that develops in the placenta of pregnant women affecting countless unborn children, the other, cerebral malaria, that develops in the brain's blood vessels - malaria's most deadly form.

Since ages malaria has notoriously stalked pregnant women, said Tropical disease specialists affiliated with Toronto's McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health (MRC).

A decade ago, researchers showed malaria parasites could accumulate in the newly created placenta. But Dr. Kevin Kain, Director of the Sandra A. Rotman Laboratories at the MRC, said that it's still unclear how parasites hiding in the placenta actually result in placental and foetal injury.

And in the new research, the scientists claim to have unravelled part of this mystery, by finding that women with placental malaria carry a biomarker in their blood - a protein called C5a, which is an important part of the body's innate defence against infections but one that needs to be carefully controlled.

At the time of over-activation by malaria infection, C5a appears leads to an excessive inflammatory response and disrupts normal blood vessel growth in the placenta, raising the risk of spontaneous abortions or low birth weight infants.

The scientists conducted tests on pregnant women in Kenya, and found that those with placental malaria had elevated levels of C5a in their blood compared to expectant mothers without the disease.