The Defensive Interactions of Prominent Infectious Protozoan Parasites: The Host’s Complement System

Abstract

The complement system exerts crucial functions both in innate immune responses and adaptive humoral immunity. This pivotal system plays a major role dealing with pathogen invasions including protozoan parasites. Different pathogens including parasites have developed sophisticated strategies to defend themselves against complement killing. Some of these strategies include the employment, mimicking or inhibition of host’s complement regulatory proteins, leading to complement evasion. Therefore, parasites are proven to use the manipulation of the complement system to assist them during infection and persistence. Herein, we attempt to study the interaction´s mechanisms of some prominent infectious protozoan parasites including Plasmodium, Toxoplasma, Trypanosoma, and Leishmania dealing with the complement system. Moreover, several crucial proteins that are expressed, recruited or hijacked by parasites and are involved in the modulation of the host´s complement system are selected and their role for efficient complement killing or lysis evasion is discussed. In addition, parasite’s complement regulatory proteins appear as plausible therapeutic and vaccine targets in protozoan parasitic infections. Accordingly, we also suggest some perspectives and insights useful in guiding future investigations.