How Malaria Tricks the Immune System.

• Position: PLASMODIUM FALCIPARUM

Global efforts to eradicate malaria are crucially dependent on scientists' ability to outsmart the malaria parasite, and Plasmodium falciparum is notoriously clever: it is quick to develop resistance against medications and has such a complex life cycle that blocking it with a vaccine has proved elusive.

In a study reported in Nature Communications, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, together with collaborators in Ireland and Australia, have shown that P. falciparum is even more devious than previously thought: not only does it hide from the body's immune defenses, it employs an active strategy to deceive the immune system.

Among transmittable diseases, malaria is second only to tuberculosis in number of victims, putting at risk nearly half of Earth's population. More than 200,-000.000 people become infected every year; about 500.000 die. most of them children under five years of age.

In the study, Neta Regev-Rudzki and her Weizmann team discovered that, in parallel with communicating with other parasites, P. falciparum uses this same communication channel for yet another purpose: to deliver a misleading message to the infected person's immune system.

Within the first 12 hours after infecting red blood cells, the parasites send out...