科学家发现了两种此前未知的疟疾寄生虫物种，它们生活在非洲大猩猩体内。Franck Prugnolle及其同事报告说，大猩猩能够携带一种能导致疟疾的恶性疟原虫（Plasmodium falciparum），这种疟原虫曾被认为只存在于人类身上。疟疾每年导致200万人死亡，其中85%的死亡发生在撒哈拉以南非洲。

这组科学家检查了喀麦隆的125只野生黑猩猩以及84只大猩猩的排泄物样本，并测试了加蓬的3只大猩猩的血样，从而研究了生活在猿的种群中的疟原虫的范围。这组作者发现Plasmodium GorA 和P. GorB这两种寄生虫物种与恶性疟原虫以及瑞氏疟原虫（P. reichenowi）有亲缘关系。这组作者指出，随着灵长类动物和人类的接触增加——这主要是由于非洲的伐木和森林砍伐——人类与动物之间的寄生虫传播的风险会增加。

原始出处：

PNAS January 19, 2010, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0914440107

African great apes are natural hosts of multiple related malaria species, including Plasmodium falciparum

Franck Prugnollea,1,2, Patrick Duranda,1, Cécile Neelb,c, Benjamin Ollomod, Francisco J. Ayalae,2, Céline Arnathaua, Lucie Etienneb, Eitel Mpoudi-Ngolec, Dieudonné Nkoghed, Eric Leroyd,f, Eric Delaporteb, Martine Peetersb, and Fran?ois Renauda,2

aLaboratoire Génétique et Evolution des Maladies Infectieuses, Unité Mixte de Recherche 2724, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique–Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement Montpellier, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France;
bUnité Mixte de Recherche 145, Virus de l’Immunodéficience Humaine/ Syndrome de l’ImmunoDéficience Acquise et Maladies Associées, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement and University of Montpellier 1, 34394 Montpellier, France;
cInstitut de recherches Médicales et d’études des Plantes Médicinales Prévention du Sida au Cameroun Centre de Recherche Médicale, BP 906, Yaoundé, Cameroon;
dUnité des Maladies Virales émergentes, Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville, BP 769, Franceville, Gabon;
eDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-2525; and
fEmergence des Pathologies Virales, Unité Mixte de Recherche 190, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement–Université de la Méditerranée, 13005 Marseille, France

Plasmodium reichenowi, a chimpanzee parasite, was until very recently the only known close relative of Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent agent of human malaria. Recently, Plasmodium gaboni, another closely related chimpanzee parasite, was discovered, suggesting that the diversity of Plasmodium circulating in great apes in Africa might have been underestimated. It was also recently shown that P. reichenowi is a geographically widespread and genetically diverse chimpanzee parasite and that the world diversity of P. falciparum is fully included within the much broader genetic diversity of P. reichenowi. The evidence indicates that all extant populations of P. falciparum originated from P. reichenowi, likely by a single transfer from chimpanzees. In this work, we have studied the diversity of Plasmodium species infecting chimpanzees and gorillas in Central Africa (Cameroon and Gabon) from both wild-living and captive animals. The studies in wild apes used noninvasive sampling methods. We confirm the presence of P. reichenowi and P. gaboni in wild chimpanzees. Moreover, our results reveal the existence of an unexpected genetic diversity of Plasmodium lineages circulating in gorillas. We show that gorillas are naturally infected by two related lineages of parasites that have not been described previously, herein referred to as Plasmodium GorA and P. GorB, but also by P. falciparum, a species previously considered as strictly human specific. The continuously increasing contacts between humans and primate populations raise concerns about further reciprocal host transfers of these pathogens.