Culture model for the study of cerebral malaria: antibodies from Plasmodium falciparum-infected comatose patients inhibit the dendritic development of Purkinje cells.

The in vitro development of kitten Purkinje cells was inhibited by sera or IgG from cerebral malaria (CM) patients but not by sera from acute non-complicated malaria (NCM) cases. This inhibitory effect, quantified by computer-assisted methods, concerned the dendritic (though not the axonal) development and was found to be related to the presence of CM sera of self-reactive antibodies of the IgG class. These results suggest that protection acquired against the major complication of Plasmodium falciparum malaria may correspond to the repression of an abnormal stimulation of autoreactive B cells.