ArticleeLife2026
A natural experiment in Kenya reveals durable immunosuppressive effects of early childhood malaria: a longitudinal cohort study.
Article in eLife, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Life Course Malaria Exposure and SARS-CoV-2 Seroepidemiology in Ugandan Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study Nested in a Birth Cohort.Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH · 2026Article
- VRC01-CLASS PRECURSOR FREQUENCY IN AN AFRICAN POPULATION IS INFLUENCED BY IGHV1-2 ALLELIC COMPOSITION AND NOT MALARIA EXPOSURE.Research square · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Background: Chronic malaria exposure has been proposed to modulate immune function, but its long-term effects on antibody-mediated responses to unrelated pathogens remain poorly defined. Whether these effects persist beyond periods of active infection and how early-life exposure shapes humoral immunity over time is not well understood. Methods: We leveraged a natural experiment in coastal Kenya - where two regions (Junju and Ngerenya) diverged sharply in malaria transmission from around 2004 - to evaluate the long-term immunological consequences of malaria exposure in childhood. Using a protein microarray platform, we measured IgG responses to vaccine and pathogen antigens in 123 children sampled longitudinally over a 15-year period. Active weekly malaria surveillance enabled precise reconstruction of individual exposure histories. Results: IgG responses to Conclusions: These findings suggest that malaria exposure during early childhood is linked with durable suppression of antibody responses to unrelated pathogens and vaccines. This effect persists long after infection and may partially explain the overall diminished long-term vaccine effectiveness in malaria-endemic settings. Funding: This study was supported by fellowship funding to C.J.S. from the Wellcome Trust (WT105882MA). The funder played no role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. M.S.S was funded in whole by Science for Africa Foundation to the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training, and Science in Africa (DELTAS Africa) program [DEL-22-012] with support from Wellcome Trust and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and is part of the EDCPT2 programme supported by the European Union. For purposes of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.