HIV and Malaria Co-Infection: A Game of Immunological Russian Roulette

Around the world, there are approximately 300 million cases of malaria, from which 1 million deaths occur (1). In 2010 alone, the number of people infected with HIV increased by 2.7 million, altogether amounting to 36.7 million HIV-infected individuals globally (2). Both “diseases of poverty”, malaria and HIV have similar geographical distributions, prevalent particularly in third-world sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. Studies have shown that due to this geographical overlap, co-infection of the two diseases is a common phenomenon in these regions (3,4).

HIV/AIDS is brought about by a virus whereas malaria is caused by a plasmodium. Co-infection of the two diseases, therefore, has great potential towards the investigation of dynamics between the mechanisms of immune response to both infections. Ryan-Payseur, et al., in this paper, are looking to elucidate just that; that is, what exactly happens to the immune system when it is infected by a virus and a parasite? This is an interesting paper because in research, it is difficult to examine the effects of co-infection in naturally occurring infections because naïve individuals do not exist—humans co-infected with HIV and malaria often have been previously exposed to malaria, which can complicate results (5). Nevertheless, the researchers for this paper were able to circumvent this problem, as well as the additional problem of an accurate animal model (Fig. 1), through a series of imaginative tweaks to the primate model of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV)-plasmodium infection.

[ Fig. 1 ]