Contribution of humoral immunity to the therapeutic response in falciparum malaria

Abstract

The contribution of humoral immunity to the therapeutic response in acute falciparum malaria was assessed in a case-control study. Forty adult Thai patients with acute falciparum malaria who had subsequent recrudescent infections and 40 patients matched for age, therapeutic regimen, and disease severity who were cured by Day 28 were studied. All cured patients had positive immunoglobulin (Ig) G to ring-infected erythrocyte surface antigen (RESA) in their admission plasma, compared with only 60% of patients who failed to respond to treatment (P < 0.001). The proportion of IgM-positive cases at admission was also higher in the successfully treated group than in the group with failure (70% versus 30%) (P < 0.001). The geometric mean (95% confidence interval) reciprocal IgG titer at admission was significantly higher in cured patients (187.0 [83.5-418.3]) compared with those who experienced treatment failure (11.6 [5.1-26.5]) (P < 0.001). The patients with uncomplicated malaria who were both IgG and IgM positive at admission had significantly shorter fever clearance times and lower admission parasitemia levels compared with those who were negative (P = 0.01 and P = 0.02, respectively). The median (range) in vitro parasite multiplication rate was significantly lower in cultures containing positive anti-RESA antibody plasma compared with those containing normal plasma (0.7 [0.1-3.5] versus 2.6 [0.1-12.1]; P < 0.001). These results suggest that antimalarial antibodies may play an important supportive role in the therapeutic response to antimalarial drugs during acute falciparum malaria.