Changes Related to Age in Natural and Acquired Systemic Self-IgG Responses in Malaria

Figure 1

Representative IgG autoreactive patterns obtained with plasma from subjects living in malaria endemic area. The tested plasmas were obtained from malaria-exposed individuals (MEIs) with or without neurological manifestations, of all ages (from 1 to 86 years old). In parallel nonexposed healthy subjects called nonendemic controls (NECs) were also evaluated. For these western blot analyses, protein extracts of the central nervous system (CNS) tissue collected in one subject with no history of neurological disease were used as antigenic targets. Despite the heterogeneous band patterns, comparison of the strips allowed identification of some singular antigenic bands. Some bands were shared by different groups of subjects (vertical arrows). In contrast, other bands were specifically found in some groups of subjects (diagonal arrows). As illustrated, p94 and p43 protein bands were specifically found in either MEI with neurological symptoms or in MEI without neurological symptoms.