AI Summary
This study conducted by McGill-affiliated researchers revealed that mice infected with parasites causing cerebral malaria in the middle of the night had less severe symptoms compared to those infected during the day. The spread of parasites within hosts was also more limited when infected at night. This finding has the potential to lead to new treatment practices aligning medication with circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms, regulated by a master clock in the brain, play a crucial role in influencing disease severity and the host's ability to fight off parasites. This research could offer insights into more effective treatments for malaria and other parasitic diseases.
A discovery by McGill-affiliated researchers could lead to more effective treatment of malaria and other parasitic diseases.
When mice are infected in the middle of the night with the parasites causing cerebral malaria, the symptoms of the disease are less severe than for those inflected during the day, and the spread of the parasites within the hosts is more limited, research teams from McGill University, the Douglas Research Centre and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre have discovered.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. It kills more than half a million people each year, most of them children. Cerebral malaria is the deadliest form of the disease.
The researchers’ findings have the potential to lead to new treatment practices based on aligning medication with our circadian rhythms.
How circadian rhythms of host and parasite interact
Circadian rhythms are defined as physiological and behavioral oscillations with cycles of approximately 24 hours, matching the Earth’s rotation, that persist in the absence of environmental timing cues. These rhythms are regulated by a master clock in the brain, as well as by clocks located in most other organs and cell types throughout the organism.
“We explored how the circadian rhythms of both the host and the malaria parasite interact to affect the severity of the disease and the host’s ability to fight off the parasite,” said Priscilla Carvalho Cabral, a recent McGill PhD graduate who carried out the experiments described in two