Malarial Resistance and Susceptibility, Genetics of

Brian C Verrelli, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

Published online: July 2008

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0020766

Resistance to malaria in humans, as well as drug and insecticide resistance by the malarial parasite and the mosquito that acts as its vector, respectively, is the result of adaptation by all three organisms. Characterization of the function and evolution of the genes underlying this resistance and susceptibility is paramount to our understanding of malarial treatment and eradication.

Keywords: malaria; plasmodium; anopheles; anemia; parasite

Figure 1. Global percentages of children with malarial infections. Although several geographic areas of South America, India, Southeast Asia and Australasia have frequencies of malaria that range from 10% to 50%, sub-Saharan Africa is most afflicted with frequencies >50% in many regions.
Figure 2. Dateline for malarial drugs and subsequent Plasmodium resistance. Variation in parasite resistance (R) ranges from an almost immediate response, as in pyrimethamine (Pyr)–sulfadoxine (SDX), to decades later, with different geographic regions often taking longer than others as in chloroquine (CQ). Other drugs are proguanil (PG), artemisinin (Art), mefloquine (Mef), halofantrine (Hal), atovaquone (Ato), chlorproguanil and dapsone (LD) (Hyde, 2005).
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    Williams TN (2006) Human red blood cell polymorphisms and malaria. Current Opinion in Microbiology 9: 388–394.

Related Sub-Topics:

Coevolution | Selection and Variation | Human Evolution | Inter-Individual Variation and Polymorphism | Evolution of Coding and Functional Modules
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Article Title: Malarial Resistance and Susceptibility, Genetics of
 
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Verrelli, Brian C(Jul 2008) Malarial Resistance and Susceptibility, Genetics of. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0020766]