A study on the pathogenesis of human cerebral malaria and cerebral babesiosis

• Main Authors: Masamichi Aikawa, Emsri Pongponratn, Tatsuya Tegoshi, Kei-Ichiro Nakamura, Tsuyoshi Nagatake, Alan Cochrane, Luiz S. Ozaki
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Ministério da Saúde 1992-01-01
• Series: Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.
• Subjects: human cerebral malaria; cerebral babesiosis; pathogenesis; Plasmodium; Babesia; rhesus monkey
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0074-02761992000700051

Cerebral complications are important, but poorly understood pathological features of infections caused by some species of Plasmodium and Babesia. Patients dying from P. falciparum were classified as cerebral or non-cerebral cases according to the cerebral malaria coma scale. Light microscopy revealed that cerebral microvessels of cerebral malaria patients were field with a mixture of parazited and unparazited erythrocytes, with 94% of the vessels showing parasitized red blood cell (PRBC) sequestration. Some degree of PRBC sequestration was also found in non-cerebral malaria patients, but the percentage of microvessls with sequestered PRBC was only 13% Electron microscopy demonstrated knobs on the membrane of PRBC that formed focal junctions with the capillary endothelium. A number of host cell molecules such as CD36, thrombospondim (TSP) and intracellular adhesion molecule I (ICAM-1) may function as endothelial cell surfacereports for P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes. Affinity labeling of CD36 and TSP to the PRBC surface showed these molecules specifically bind to the knobs. Babesia bovis infected erythrocytes procedure projections of the erythrocyte membrane that are similar to knobs. When brain tissue from B. bovis-infected cattle was examined, cerebral capillaries were packed with PRBC. Infected erythrocytes formed focal attachments with cerebral endothelial cells at the site of these knob-like projections. These findings indicate that cerebral pathology caused by B. bovis is similar to human cerebral malaria. A search for cytoadherence proteins in the endothelial cells may lead to a better understanding of the pathogenisis of cerebral babesiosis.