Mud-brick, thatch-roofed school houses in small villages that cling to rugged mountainsides in Papua New Guinea - this was the topic of conversation between two malaria researchers at a Philadelphia restaurant during a break in the action at the 2003 American Society of Tropical Hygiene meeting. Well, not the school houses themselves, but what was in them: A group of children who appear to be immune to the Plasmodium vivax parasite, despite their constant exposure. Why?
Christopher King of Case Western University's Center for Global Health and Diseases and Ivo Mueller of the Papua New Guinea Institute for Medical Research wanted to design a study to find out. Sitting at the restaurant, they both agreed: "We need to do this study," King says. In the end, it provided evidence that antibodies can protect people from vivax malaria.
Papua New Guinea is a nation beset by malaria, the single most common ...
