Miscellaneous
Humans have had to live with malaria for a long time. So long, in fact, that we even see changes in our genome that protect us from the disease. "Sickle cell anemia probably emerged in human populations approximately ten to twelve thousand years ago. And this occurred coincidental with the change in lifestyle and agricultural settlements. So there was enough population densities of people that mix with population densities of mosquitos," Jim Kazura said. Two copies of the sickle cell gene give you malformed blood cells, or sickle cell anemia. But, one copy of the gene makes your blood cells just weird enough that, 90% of the time, the malaria parasite can’t invade them. Jim Kazura is professor in the Center for Global Health and Diseases at Case Western Reserve University . He studies factors affecting naturally-occurring immunity against Malaria, particularly in young children. "People have done studies on children with sickle cell anemia in sub-Saharan Africa now - forty to fifty