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Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as abdominal pain and diarrhea, are frequently observed in patients with Plasmodium falciparum malaria. However, the correlation between malaria intestinal pathology and intestinal microbiota has not been investigated. In the present study, infection of C57BL/6 mice with P. berghei ANKA (PbA) caused intestinal pathological changes, such as detachment of epithelia in the small intestines and increased intestinal permeability, which correlated with development with experimental cerebral malaria (ECM). Notably, an apparent dysbiosis occurred, characterized by a reduction of Firmicutes and an increase in Proteobacteria. Furthermore, some genera of microbiota correlated with parasite growth and/or ECM development. By contrast, BALB/c mice are resistant to ECM and exhibit milder intestinal pathology and dysbiosis. These results indicate that the severity of cerebral and intestinal pathology coincides with the degree of alteration in microbiota. This is the first report demonstrating that malaria affects intestinal microbiota and causes dysbiosis.

Malaria is still one of the infectious diseases urgently requiring control and causes socioeconomic burdens on people residing in developing countries. Malaria vaccines are expected to control the disease. However, there is no effective vaccine available despite the intense efforts of malaria scientists. One strategy for a malaria vaccine is to prevent parasite spread by means of interfering with parasite development in mosquito vectors, which is the so-called transmission-blocking vaccine (TBV). We will here review the current progress of TBV.

We previously reported that the combined treatment of perioperative administration of donor splenocytes via the recipient's portal vein (DSPV) and a short-course Tacrolimus significantly prolonged the survival of fully allogenic grafts in rat small bowel transplantation (SBTX). In the present study we examined whether this effect depended on the quantity of the administered alloantigens in DSPV. In addition, we examined the expression of the surface antigen on T cells of the splenocytes and the induced toleragenic factor, according to the tolerant recipients which in our previous report had shown the prolongation of allogenic transplant small bowel graft survival by the combined treatment of DSPV (1×108 donor splenocytes) and a short-course Tacrolimus. Donor splenocytes were prepared from Brown-Norway (BN (RT1n)) rat spleens for Lewis (LEW (RT1l)) recipients. The recipients (n=10), treated with a short course of Tacrolimus (0.5mg/kg, 0 to 3 days postoperatively) only showed graft rejection with an average of 6.3±1.0 days postoperatively. However, the combined treatment, consisting of DSPV of 1×108 donor splenocytes and a short course Tacrolimus significantly prolonged graft survival to 12.7±2.1 days (n=12, P

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