A GENE variant that protects against a type of malaria common in people of west African descent might have a deadly downside – it could speed up the growth of cancers.
The red blood cells of many people in west Africa lack a surface protein called DARC. Around 70 per cent of African-Americans have this characteristic, which protects against the Plasmodium vivax malaria parasite, but not other kinds.
Now Alex Lentsch and Hui Shen at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio have discovered that in mice whose red blood cells lack the DARC protein, prostate tumours grow much faster. The reason,…
