Gorillas may be key to malaria mystery

2010/10/01

MALARIA appears to have jumped to humans from gorillas, and the parasite may have spread globally from a single gorilla to a single human, researchers report.

DNA from the droppings of nearly 3000 apes – gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos – shows the strain of malaria parasite most common in humans is virtually identical to one of many strains that infects gorillas.

Beatrice Hahn, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues used ape droppings collected to study the origins of the Aids virus for their study, published in the journal Nature.

Hahn’s team looked for DNA from malaria parasites, including the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes most human cases.

“Wild apes, in particular the common chimps and the western gorillas, are naturally infected with at least eight or nine different Plasmodium species,” Hahn said. For years chimps were the chief suspects. But Hahn’s data shows only gorillas are infected by a Plasmodium species virtually identical on the genetic level to the type that infects humans. The findings could have implications for efforts to get rid of malaria, said Dr Larry Slutsker, who heads the malaria programme at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

“If we were trying to rid the planet of every last parasite and there was a reservoir in western gorillas, that would have implications for eradication. I don’t think we are there, obviously,” he said. — BY MAGGIE FOX Reuters

http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=437111
(Submitted by Chad Arment)