How Dantu Blood Group protects against malaria - and how all humans could benefit

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/wtsi-hdb091420.php

News Release 16-Sep-2020
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The secret of how the Dantu genetic blood variant helps to protect against malaria has been revealed for the first time by scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge and the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kenya. The team found that red blood cells in people with the rare Dantu blood variant have a higher surface tension that prevents them from being invaded by the world's deadliest malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum.

The findings, published today (16 September) in Nature, could also be significant in the wider battle against malaria. Because the surface tension of human red blood cells increases as they age, it may be possible to design drugs that imitate this natural process to prevent malaria infection or reduce its severity.

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In 2017, researchers discovered that the rare Dantu blood variant, which is found regularly only in parts of East Africa, provides some degree of protection against severe malaria

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Because humans have evolved alongside malaria for tens of thousands of years, some people in the worst affected areas have developed genetic resistance to the disease. The most famous example is sickle cell trait, which confers 80 per cent resistance to malaria, but can cause serious illness in those with two copies of the gene. There is currently no evidence that the Dantu variant is accompanied by other health complications.

Dr Alejandro Marin-Menendez, of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "The fact that we see the most protective adaptations in areas where malaria is most prevalent tells us a lot about how these parasites have influenced human evolution. Malaria is still an incredibly destructive disease, but evolutionary adaptations like sickle cell trait and the Dantu variant may partially explain why the mortality rate is much lower than the rate of infection. We've been fighting malaria parasites for as long as we've been human, so there may be other adaptations and mechanisms yet to be discovered."

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