Cerebral Malaria May Have Passed From Gorillas To Us

BBC News ^ | September 22, 2010 | Katie Alcock

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Humans may have originally caught malaria from gorillas, scientists say... researchers from the US, three African countries, and Europe have examined malaria parasites in great ape faeces. They found the DNA from western gorilla parasites was the most similar to human parasites. Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, and is carried by mosquitoes. The most common species found in Africa, Plasmodium falciparum, causes dangerous cerebral malaria. Over 800,000 people die from malaria each year in the continent. Until now, scientists had assumed that when the evolutionary tree of humans split off from that of chimpanzees -- around five to seven million years ago -- so had Plasmodium falciparum... new evidence suggests human malaria is much newer... The human Plasmodium was not very closely related to chimpanzee Plasmodium, as had been thought -- but it was very closely related to one out of three species of gorilla Plasmodium from western gorillas in Central and West Africa... going to investigate further to see exactly how different the gorilla and human parasites are. Dr Hahn says that it is possible they are even the same species, and that cross-infection between humans and gorillas may be going on now.

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