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Blood, 15 June 2005, Vol. 105, No. 12, pp. 4853-4860. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on February 22, 2005; DOI 10.1182/blood-2004-12-4948. This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 2004-12-4948v1 105/12/4853    most recent Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Rights and Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Tiffert, T. Articles by Mohandas, N. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Tiffert, T. Articles by Mohandas, N. Social Bookmarking                   What's this?  Previous Article  |  Next Article  Submitted December 30, 2004 Accepted February 17, 2005 The hydration state of human red blood cells and their susceptibility to invasion by Plasmodium falciparum Teresa Tiffert*, Virgilio L Lew, Hagai Ginsburg, Miriam Krugliak, Laure Croisille, and Narla Mohandas Physiological Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom Department of Biological Chemistry, Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel New York Blood Center, New York, NY, USA * Corresponding author; email: jtt1000{at}cam.ac.uk. In most inherited red blood cell (RBC) disorders with high gene frequencies in malaria endemic regions, the distribution of red cell hydration states is much wider than normal. The relation between hydration state of circulating RBCs and protection against severe falciparum malaria remains unexplored. The present investigation was prompted by a casual observation suggesting that falciparum merozoites were unable to invade isotonically dehydrated normal RBCs. We designed an experimental model to induce uniform and stable isotonic volume changes in RBC populations from healthy donors by increasing or decreasing their KCl contents through a reversible K+ permeabilization pulse. Swollen and mildly dehydrated RBCs were able to sustain P. falciparum cultures with similar efficiency to untreated RBCs. However, parasite invasion and growth were progressively reduced in dehydrated RBCs. In a parallel study, P. falciparum invasion was investigated in density-fractionated RBCs from normal subjects and from individuals with inherited RBC abnormalities affecting primarily hemoglobin or the RBC membrane (thalassemias, hereditary ovalocytosis, xerocytosis, Hb CC and Hb SC). Invasion was invariably reduced in the dense cell fractions in all conditions. These results suggest that the presence of dense RBCs is a protective factor, additional to any other protection mechanism prevailing in each of the different pathologies. CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this? This article has been cited by other articles: V. L. Lew, N. Daw, Z. Etzion, T. Tiffert, A. Muoma, L. Vanagas, and R. M. Bookchin Effects of age-dependent membrane transport changes on the homeostasis of senescent human red blood cells Blood, August 15, 2007; 110(4): 1334 - 1342. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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