How Dantu Blood Group protects against malaria - and how all humans could benefit

(Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) The secret of how the Dantu genetic blood variant helps to protect against malaria has been revealed for the first time by scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge and the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kenya. The team found that red blood cells in people with the rare Dantu blood variant have a higher surface tension that prevents them from being invaded by the world's deadliest malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum.
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news