Yaoundé, Cameroon (15 November 2005)--Two genetic conditions--sickle cell trait and a mild version of the blood disorder known as thalassemia--that by themselves give millions of Africans natural protection against malaria, can be rendered essentially useless when they occur together, according to a new study of Kenyan children that is to be discussed today at the Fourth Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Pan-African Malaria Conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon. “We’ve looked at these traits individually and we expected that if people had both of them, they would be really protected,” said Tom Williams, a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and the study’s lead author. “But it turns out that when you start combining the two, you can lose the effect of both.” With malaria researchers eager to find and understand more about genetic traits that confer protection against malaria, the study--recently published in Nature Genetics--shows how challenging it can be to pinpoint protective genes and, moreover, predict how they might be influenced by other traits. (Thursday, 11:50 a.m., Iroko Hall, Parallel Session 23, Presentation 148)
