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Source: ONE News -
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Malaria may have jumped to humans from chimpanzees much as AIDS
did, US researchers reported in a study they hope could help in
developing a vaccine against the infection.
They found evidence the parasite that causes most cases of malaria
is a close genetic relative of a parasite found in chimpanzees.
Genetic analysis suggests the human parasite is a direct
descendant of the chimp parasite, they reported in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.
The malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum may have been
transmitted to human beings as recently as 10,000 years ago,
Francisco Ayala of the University of California Irvine and
colleagues said.
"When malaria transferred to humans, it became very severe very
quickly," Ayala said in a statement.
"The disease in humans has become resistant to many drugs. It's my
hope that our discovery will bring us closer to making a
vaccine."
Malaria kills an estimated one million people a year, mostly
children, according to the World Health Organization.
The mosquito-borne parasite causes severe disease in more than
300 million every year.
Ayala's team sampled blood samples from 94 chimpanzees in Cameroon
and Ivory Coast to find the apes' version of the parasite.
"The closest known relative of P. falciparum is a chimpanzee
parasite, Plasmodium reichenowi," they wrote. They found eight
samples of P. reichenowi.
Their genetic testing of the samples showed all known P. falciparum
parasites originated from P. reichenowi.
Researchers are trying to make a vaccine against malaria but are
having difficulty. Understanding how it became adapted to humans
could help in this work.
The finding is the latest to show that some of humanity's worst
diseases originated in animals.
AIDS came from chimpanzees - and French researchers reported
that they found a Cameroonian woman had been infected with an
HIV virus that apparently came from gorillas
.
Swine flu, H5N1 avian influenza and in fact all influenza viruses
are believed to have originated in animals.
Other animal-to-human infections include severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which killed 800 people in 2003-2004, Ebola and Marburg viruses, and plague.
