Cerebral Malaria: Protection by Erythropoietin
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Cerebral malaria (CM) is still responsible for unacceptable death rate, while new antimalarial drugs were recently developed.
CM pathophysiology shares essential biological features with cerebral ischemia. Because erythropoietin (Epo) was demonstrated
to reduce mortality rate during experimental cerebral ischemia (1), in the early 2000, we wondered whether Epo could help
to reduce the burden of CM. There is now evidence that Epo high doses could prevent early mortality during cerebral malaria.
This evidence was obtained first using mice model of cerebral malaria, and later confirmed by prospective clinical trial in
endemic area. High doses of Epo are needed to cross the blood–brain barrier (see
Note 1
) and to favor the cytoprotective versus hematopoietic effect of this pleiotropic cytokine (see
Note 2
).
