I have just received the following email from "someone" which I thought
maybe of interest to you Tom. I am just about to leave for a couple of
weeks' vacation and have no time to seek permission from the author to
subscribe his message to the board, hence the anonymity.
"......On problem that comes up when discussing synchronous development in
P. falciparum is that the regular fevers often do not show up for some
days after the infection becomes patent...then they do arrive. One
possible explanation is that the initial infection consists of a great
diversity of parasite clones which vary in their reproductive behavior;
eventually one or few clones become dominant in the infection and the
fevers become regular...and the infection is now synchronous in
development. The older literature shows the different patterns for the
three common humans malarias, but without much of an explanation. Some
years ago I spoke with a malariologist in Sierra Leone (local guy working
in only "hospital" out of the city) who told me that P. falciparum early
infections had not regular fevers, but P. malariae did. Another choice
for a species with no apparent synchronized development would be one of
the malarias infecting reptiles."
Brian M. Cooke
