Yale Scientists Explore the Role of Glucose Metabolism in Malaria


More than 1,000,000 individuals die annually from cerebral protozoal infection, the foremost deadly variety of the illness. A recent study, LED by Yale investigators, explores the role of aldohexose metabolism within the development of the illness and will hold a key to preventing or treating it in humans.

Using mice models of cerebral protozoal infection, the analysis team experimented with other ways of manipulating feeding behavior. supported their findings in a very previous study, they theorized that reduced food intake — and specifically reduced aldohexose utilization — once protozoal infection would increase the flexibility of mice to tolerate the infection.

To block the uptake of aldohexose in cells, they treated the infected mice with an aldohexose matter referred to as 2DG. This intervention protected the mice from developing a cerebral protozoal infection, increasing their survival by many days. Through more examination, the researchers determined that 2DG protected the mice by decreasing curdling and mini-strokes within the brain that may otherwise lead to death. The mice still developed anemia, however they lived long enough to own the parasite cleared with antibiotics.

Blocking aldohexose metabolism with 2DG seems to assist the animals to tolerate infection-related injury to the brain by decreasing the flexibility of protozoal infection to cause the blood to clot. This protecting result allowed the mice to each tolerate the fatal accident of the infection on the brain, and conjointly resist the parasite itself once treated with antibiotics. The finding suggests that 2DG, a cytotoxic drug, may have a job in treating the first part of the cerebral protozoal infection, the researchers the same.

The full paper, LED by 1st author and prof Andrew Wang and senior author and Sterling faculty member of Immunobiology Ruslan Medzhitov, was revealed in PNAS.

Publication: Andrew Wang, et al., “Glucose metabolism mediates disease tolerance in cerebral malaria,” PNAS, 2018; doi:10.1073/pnas.1806376115

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