Plasmodium Falciparum Infection: In Silico Preliminary Studies

Abstract

<div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>Malaria is an infectious disease of great impact in terms of public health, given the number of people affected and subjected to the risk of illness. Protozoa of the genus Plasmodium cause it and five species can infect humans: </span><em>Plasmodium falciparum</em><span>, </span><em>Plasmodium vivax</em><span>, </span><em>Plasmodium ovale</em><span>, </span><em>Plasmodium malariae </em><span>and </span><em>Plasmodium knowlesi</em><span>; the first is able to produce the most severe cases of the disease. Despite its clinical and epidemiological relevance and investigations in development – targeted at different aspects of the interaction between humans and </span><em>Plasmodium </em><span>protozoa of the genus – there remains many questions about different aspects of the malaria pathophysiology. To study such gaps, interdisciplinary strategies can be pursed, which involve biology, medicine an computer science, as part of the trial </span><span>in silico</span><span>. Such approach provides agility, low cost and does not imply ethical issues that permeate the experiments </span><em>in vitro </em><span>and </span><em>in vivo</em><span>. Based on these considerations, this article presents preliminary results of a computational model of the interaction between </span><em>P. falciparum </em><span>and erythrocytes, implemented in </span><em>AutoSimmune </em><span>system. The results obtained show that the system is able to simulate the host cells infection process by protozoan with similarities with the biological reality. </span></p></div></div></div>