Is prolactin responsible for avian, saurian, and mammalian relapse and periodicity of fever in malarial infections?

Abstract

P.C.C. Garnham came to Toronto nearly 35 years ago to see if he, and the laboratory of A.M. Fallis, could unravel the enigma of "relapsing" malaria-like infections in migrating ducks (to Algonquin Park, Ontario). At the time, not enough was known about the endocrinology of avian migration and reproduction. Now a growing body of indirect evidence seems to point to a role for prolactin in many of the uniquely pathologic phenomena witnessed in malarial infections. Arguments in favour of the involvement of prolactin, as both a developmental hormone and a proinflammatory cytokine, in the pathology of relapse, fever, anaemia, and maternal malaria are presented in the hope that experiments to test such involvement will be designed.