Red blood cell bursting after infection of malaria (Photo courtesy of scienceblogs.com)

Malaria may have jumped to humans from chimpanzees much as AIDS did, US researchers reported in a recent study they hope could help in developing a vaccine against the infection.

The malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum may have been transmitted to human beings as recently as 10,000 years ago, Francisco Ayala of the University of California Irvine and colleagues said.

“When malaria transferred to humans, it became very severe very quickly,” Ayala said in a statement on Monday

“The disease in humans has become resistant to many drugs. It’s my hope that our discovery will bring us closer to making a vaccine.”

Malaria kills an estimated one million people a year, mostly children, according to the World Health Organization. The mosquito-borne parasite causes severe disease in more than 300 million every year.

Ayala’s team sampled blood samples from 94 chimpanzees in Cameroon and Ivory Coast to find the apes’ version of the parasite.

Researchers are trying to make a vaccine against malaria but are having difficulty. Understanding how it became adapted to humans could help in this work.

The finding is the latest to show that some of humanity’s worst diseases originated in animals. AIDS came from chimpanzees - and French researchers reported on Sunday that they found a Cameroonian woman had been infected with an HIV virus that apparently came from gorillas.

Source: Reuters