On the study of the dynamical aspects of parasitemia in the blood cycle of malaria

Malaria is an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. One striking aspect regarding malaria is the fact that individuals living in endemic areas do not develop immunity against the parasite, falling ill whenever they are exposed tothe parasite. The understanding of why immunity is not developed in the usual way against Plasmodium is crucial to the improvement of treatment and prevention. In this work, we study some aspects of the dynamics of the blood cycle of malaria using both modelling and data analysis of observed case-histories described by parasitemia time series. By comparing our simulations with experimental results we have shown that the different behaviour observed among patients may be associated to differences in the efficiency of the immune system to control the infection. © EDP Sciences/Societa Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2007.