Scanty congenital plasmodium parasites as a possible cause for several autoimmune diseases.

Recently it was reported that 19.8% of the patients with rheumatoid factor, who had no previous history of malaria and had not visited endemic regions for at least the past five years, generated false-positive results in two rapid malaria tests that capture two different plasmodium antigens. This intriguing finding supports the hypothesis presented, suggesting systemic lupus erythematosus and possibly several other autoimmune diseases are caused by a scanty amount of persistent plasmodium parasites in the internal tissues, which provokes diverse autoantibodies production, and can be transmitted congenitally. This hypothesis suggests a comprehensive explanation for the predominance of autoimmune diseases in African populations in the West yet their infrequency in tropical Africa, and for the studies reporting that several of these diseases benefit from antimalarials. The implication of this hypothesis is that these autoimmune diseases are actually infectious, and may infect individuals who contracted malaria in the past or whose female ancestors had contracted it, and possibly blood transfusion recipients.