Status of immunity following cure of recurrent vivax malaria.

In 1938 Coggeshall and in 1944 Maier and Coggeshall (1, 2) showed that Plasmodium knowlesi in rhesus monkeys could be eliminated by various sulfonamide drugs and that the residual immunity as tested by reinoculation with the homologous parasite was of a mild degree and of relatively short duration. Unfortunately there were no antimalarial compounds which could be relied upon to exert similar action in human malaria until Alving and others (3, 4) demonstrated that pentaquine would eradicate acute and chronic vivax infections. Since these patients were treated and observed in nonendemic area, there was no problem of differentiating relapses from initial infections. Furthermore, all treated subjects were healthy male prisoners who had volunteered to be inoculated by the bites of infected mosquitoes and were still available for observation. Such a combination of circumstances provided an unparalleled opportunity for investigating the status of immunity in human malaria.

Full text article: http://www.ajtmh.org/content/journals/10.4269/ajtmh.1949.s1-29.701