{"id":237119,"date":"2026-05-14T02:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/natural-malaria-immunity-human-volunteers-may-hold-the-secret-to-why-some-people-never-get-sick"},"modified":"2026-05-14T02:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:33:13","slug":"natural-malaria-immunity-human-volunteers-may-hold-the-secret-to-why-some-people-never-get-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/natural-malaria-immunity-human-volunteers-may-hold-the-secret-to-why-some-people-never-get-sick","title":{"rendered":"Natural malaria immunity: Human volunteers may hold the secret to why some people never get sick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/natural-malaria-immunity-human-volunteers-may-hold-the-secret-to-why-some-people-never-get-sick2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>People living in regions where malaria outbreaks are common experience repeated exposure to the disease, which gradually teaches the body how to fight back. Over time, they develop naturally acquired immunity that helps the body control the density of malaria parasites (Plasmodium falciparum) in the blood and prevent the development of clinical symptoms.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-72716-x\" target=\"_blank\">recent study<\/a> set out to pinpoint the specific parts of the malaria parasite that the immune system targets to protect the body from disease. The researchers deliberately infected 142 Kenyan adults known to be immune to malaria, then monitored their symptoms and parasite levels. They successfully identified six <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2026-02-immune-blueprint-widespread-malaria-parasite.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">merozoite antigens <\/a>\u2014proteins on the surface of the malaria parasite\u2014that were linked to natural immunity against the disease. The findings were published in Nature Communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People living in regions where malaria outbreaks are common experience repeated exposure to the disease, which gradually teaches the body how to fight back. Over time, they develop naturally acquired immunity that helps the body control the density of malaria parasites (Plasmodium falciparum) in the blood and prevent the development of clinical symptoms. A recent [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}