Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • In Brief
  • Published:

Lymphoma

A malaria mechanism

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 15, page 574 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

Endemic Burkitt lymphoma occurs at a high incidence in areas with high levels of infection with the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria. However, whether Plasmodium influences lymphomagenesis is not clear. Robbiani et al. used Plasmodium chabaudi infection to induce chronic malaria in mice and found that P. chabaudi induces expansion of germinal centres (GCs). GC B cells in P. chabaudi-infected mice expressed the mutator enzyme activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) and had increased DNA damage and chromosomal translocations. Mice lacking p53 in B cells develop lymphoma; P. chabaudi infection did not change the incidence of lymphoma in these mice but it favoured the development of AID-dependent mature B cell lymphomas that carried chromosomal translocations.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Robbiani, D. F. et al. Plasmodium infection promotes genomic instability and AID-dependent B cell lymphoma. Cell 162, 727–737 (2015)

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Sarah Seton-Rogers
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Seton-Rogers, S. A malaria mechanism. Nat Rev Cancer 15, 574 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc4020

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc4020

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing