Differences in malaria clearance between males and females- in Science Daily
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The article notes that females are able to clear asymptomatic malaria infections at a faster rate than their male counterparts, and the biological sex-based differences are an important factor for epidemiologists to consider in the human response to malaria parasites.
"While it is widely recognised that pregnant women have increased susceptibility to malaria infection and more severe outcomes, less attention has been paid to the possibility of other biological sex differences in malaria immunity," says lead author Jessica Briggs, Clinical Fellow in Infectious Diseases, UC San Francisco, US. "This is despite multiple studies demonstrating males are more frequently found to be infected when you go out and check in a community."
The study, followed a representative group of people living in a malaria-endemic area of eastern Uganda. Using a genetic sequencing technique called amplicon deep-sequencing, they estimated both the rate of new infections and duration of chronic asymptomatic malaria infections in the group and compared these measures by sex.
ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 October 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201027105423.htm>.