Scientists explain the protective effect of thalassemia

U.S. researchers in a new way to tell infected by the relative low mortality in thalassemia patients with malaria. According to them, of the serious complications of the tropical disease thalassemia protects the increased number of red blood cells. Thalassemia - an inherited disease caused by disruption of the structure of the protein globin. This defect results in a reduction in the size of red blood cells - red blood cells, and the reduction of their ability to transport oxygen. At the same time it is known that people with thalassemia tropical malaria wear better than healthy people. The causes of this phenomenon for a long time remained unknown. According to a variant, due to a genetic disorder of red cells forming in any way the growth of the malaria parasite in preventing them. However, the conclusions of the medical school staff to refute, New York University, this hypothesis. At the disposal of the American scientists were data from a study conducted in the mid-90s of last century in Papua New Guinea. Alpha-thalassemia was found in about 60% of the children in the study. As expected, cases of severe anemia associated with bouts of malaria, they observed much less frequently than in healthy participants. After studying blood samples from 800 children, researchers found that the presence or absence of a genetic disease does not affect the number of cells of the parasites in the blood -. It was about the same in both healthy and suffering from thalassemia participants Thus thalassemia not prevent the breeding of the malaria parasite and prevented him from infecting new cells from patients. Red blood cells of patients with thalassemia are smaller and more numerous than in healthy children. With a corresponding increase in their resistance to malaria: cause severe anemia, malaria parasites have been destroyed by an average of 10% more red blood cells than a healthy child. Increased production of red blood cells in thalassemia partially compensate for a lack of oxygen due to disruption of the structure of hemoglobin. However, this function reduces the risk of anemia and complications during an episode of malaria, accompanied by massive destruction of red blood cells. "Children with alpha thalassemia blood cells to destroy the malaria parasite to be adjusted by increasing the number of these cells," - says the study's senior author Karen Day. A detailed report on the work of U.S. scientists in the journal PLoS Medicine.