Background
Every 40 seconds a child dies of malaria, a total of more than 2000 deaths per day, [
1]. Malaria is the most important human parasitic disease in terms of deaths, clinical cases and long term consequences for affected communities. In contrast, schistosomiasis is responsible for relatively few deaths, but is associated with considerable morbidity. About 200 million people are currently thought to be infected, with a further 600 million at risk of infection [
2]. The geographical and socio-economic distribution of
Plasmodium falciparum infection overlaps with that of many helminth infections including
Schistosoma haematobium in sub-Saharan Africa. This gives potential for interaction in the overall susceptibility, pathology or clinical manifestations for these infections. Indeed there is now a growing body of evidence showing that in both natural and experimental infections, schistosome and plasmodia infections profoundly affect each other immunologically and in the degree of pathology they cause in the host. Several studies have reported both cellular and humoral immunological interactions between plasmodia and schistosome infection [
3‐
6] which may partly be explained by the existence of cross reactive epitopes between schistosome and plasmodia antigens [
7,
8].
We are interested in the potential effect of schistosome control programmes on malaria vaccine efficacy. Schistosome infection is controlled by treatment of infected people with the anti-helminth drug praziquantel and we have previously shown that treating
S. haematobium infection alters schistosome specific humoral and cellular responses, accelerating the development of these responses [
9,
10]. We have subsequently shown that this modulation of immune responses is related to a change in both the quantity and type of antigens recognized by the host's immune system [
11]. Since praziquantel treatment is used in people exposed to both malaria and schistosomiasis, it is important to determine if this chemotherapy alters any of the responses to malaria vaccine candidate antigens and therefore inadvertently affects their use for vaccination. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine whether praziquantel treatment for schistosomiasis modulates natural antibody responses to malaria vaccine candidate merozoite surface proteins [
12,
13]. We focuses on IgG1 and IgG3 immune responses associated with protection against these antigens [
12,
14].
Discussion
The overlapping geographical and socio-economic distribution of
P. falciparum and helminth infections has led to studies investigating the immunological and pathological interactions of these parasites some of which have reported the presence of cross reactive antigens between schistosome and malaria parasites (see [
7] for review). There are also several studies which have reported that treatment of schistosome-infected/exposed people with the anti-helminth drug praziquantel alters their immune responses (see [
36] for review). Given that there are now several control programmes distributing praziquantel in mass treatment programmes in Africa such as those conducted by the Schistosome Control Initiative
http://www.schisto.org/, it is vital to determine if such treatment has an impact on natural immune responses directed against malaria vaccine candidates.
In this study IgG1 and IgG3 responses directed against
S. haematobium and
P. falciparum antigens were studied before and after anti-helminth treatment with praziquantel. The presence of antibody responses to both
P. falciparum and schistosome crude antigens (except one person who showed no reaction to schistosome antigens) indicated that the participants had been exposed to the infections and the IgG subclass responses to both parasites were largely in agreement with previously published results. The predominant response to schistosome crude antigens was IgG1 which is consistent with studies in other Zimbabwean populations [
15]. Mixed IgG1 and IgG3 responses to plasmodia MSP-2 such as those observed here are common in semi-immune or non-immune cohorts [
37]. Responses to the N-terminal Block 2 region of MSP-1 are predominately of the IgG3 subclass, so the mixed responses to the DPK antigen are unusual; this might be explained by the fact that the DPK antigen also includes the Block 1 region of MSP-1 [
38], for which previous antibody isotype analysis is not available. As reported in other studies, the subclass response to MSP-1
19 was biased towards IgG1, with a minor component from the IgG3 subclass [
39,
40].
In this study the anti-plasmodial responses were not related to the schistosome responses. We and other groups have previously reported correlations between
P. falciparum and schistosome immune responses. Our previous work suggested that there was an association between immune responses directed against crude antigens from the parasites [
41], while Naus
et al reported cross reactivity between IgG3 directed against
P. falciparum MSP-2 and
S. mansoni adult worm antigens in people exposed to both parasites [
8]. They suggested that rather than having cross-reactive epitopes the two antigens might have molecules such as lectins that are cross-reactive. In this current study we found no association between anti-schistosome WWH and anti- MSP-2 responses. The differences in our results and those previously reported may be due to use of specific defined antigens as opposed to crude antigens [
41]. In cases where defined single antigens have been used [
8], the difference in our results may be due to genetic differences in the
Plasmodium parasite strains which may differ in the repeat sequences of the two MSP-2 antigens used [
42,
43]. We also showed no association between responses against MSP-1 and schistosome adult worms. This, together with our previous study showing that there was no association between schistosome-specific antibodies with responses directed against MSP-3b [
41], suggests that there may not be any cross-reactive epitopes between these
P. falciparum MSP proteins and schistosome crude antigens. This study showed that the anti-plasmodial responses did not affect the risk of being positive for infection. More detailed studies relating the level of
P. falciparum parasitemia to these responses are needed to determine if their effect is quantitative rather than qualitative. The oberservation that schistosome infection intensity was a significant risk factor for being
P. falciparum positive with the likelihood of having malaria increasing with increasing schistosome infection intensity is consistent with findings from other studies [
44]. The reason for this association is yet to be elucidated and may include several factors such as host genetics, host exposure patterns and parasite biology.
Anti-helminth treatment increased the level of the anti-schistosome IgG1 response. Although this increase in IgG1 is marginally significant (p = 0.046), it is consistent with previous reports [
9] and is not surprising as praziquantel treatment introduces a large amount of parasite antigens to the host simultaneously [
45]. In a previous study we reported that there were significant changes in responses directed against MSP-3b and Glutamate Rich Protein (Glurp R0) following praziquantel treatment, but we could not attribute this change to the anti-helminth treatment due to lack of untreated controls in the study [
41]. In this current study we were able to include a group of untreated people so that we could explicitly test the effects of treatment on plasmodia and schistosome-specific responses and although there were significant changes in the anti-plasmodial responses none of these were attributable to the anti-helminth treatment. One possible explanation for the changes in the plasmodia responses over the 6 weeks could be related to the dynamics of the
P. falciparum infection in the study population. Generally levels of IgG1 declined over the 6 weeks while IgG3 levels rose. A recent study in Kenyan children reported that the anti-plasmodial IgG1 and IgG3 responses to MSP-1 and MSP-2 antigens had a short half life with changes detectable within 6 week [
46]. In the Kenyan study, levels of antibodies declined after a malaria attack unless they were boosted by the appearance of plasmodia parasites in the blood. In our study most children who were parasitemic at the beginning of the study were also parasitemic at the 6 week time point so that the antigen challenge was present at the two time points. This would have resulted in the maintenance of responses to the antigens and may be indicating the previously published shift from IgG1 to IgG3 responses directed against merozoite surface proteins [
37]. Given the mesondemic transmission patterns of the region, full interpretation of the treatment-independent changes requires quantitative studies enumerating the parasites as well as genotyping studies indicating infection/re-infection episodes in the intervening time. However since there were no significant differences attributable to praziquantel treatment in the participants it can be concluded that anti-helminth treatment of people exposed to both
P. falciparum and
S. haematobium parasites did not affect antibody responses against the MSP-1 and -2 malaria vaccine candidates. Further studies in a younger age group (children below 5 years of age, (who may be the main vaccine target group
http://www.malariavaccine.org/about-goals.php) over a longer period will be valuable in developing integrated malaria and schistosome control programmes.
Acknowledgements
The investigation received financial support from the Medical Research Council, UK, The Wellcome Trust, UK, and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. FM acknowledges support from the MRC, UK (Grant no G81/538).
We are grateful for the co-operation of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare in Zimbabwe, the Provincial Medical Director of Mashonaland East, the Environmental Health Workers, residents, teachers and school children in Mutoko and Rusike. We also thank members of the National Institutes for Health Research (Zimbabwe) for technical support.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
LR and CM conducted the immunological assays and preliminary data analyses supervised by FM and DC. They also prepared the first drafts of the manuscript. DC provided P. falciparum antigen expression plasmids and LR and DC prepared the recombinant P. falciparum antigens. FM and TM conducted the field work and developed the hypotheses for testing. All authors read and corrected draft copies of the manuscript and approved the final version.