Ruolo dei recettori di tipo “Toll” (TLR) nella infezione malarica

Malaria mortality can reach 3 million, mostly in Africa. Plasmodium falciparum is the specie that can cause severe complications in humans. The parasites are transmitted to man (asexual phase) through the puncture of the mosquito Anopheles sp (sexual phase). Sometimes malaria can develop into severe complications. The mechanisms that are involved in the switch from a mild to a complicated disease are still not completely understood. Researchers have demonstrated that innate immunity is specific, so it can discriminate between self and non self (“pathogen-associated molecular patterns”- PAMPs) antigens through conserved receptors called “Toll-like receptors” (TLRs) (Akira 2004; Medzhitov 2004). GPI (Schofield 2002) and hemozoin (Pichangkul 2004) have been sugested as putative PAMPs for malaria. There are no data, however, that indicate which typ