Administration of CHIKV immunoglobulins may constitute a safe and efficacious prevention strategy and treatment for individuals exposed to CHIKV who are at risk of severe infection, such as neonates born to viremic mothers and adults with underlying conditions. These results provide a proof-of-concept for purifying human immunoglobulins from plasma samples from patients in the convalescent phase of an emerging infectious disease for which neither prevention nor treatment is available.

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Malaria is a complex infectious disease in which the host͞parasite interaction is strongly influenced by host genetic factors. The consequences of plasmodial infections range from asymptomatic to severe complications like the neurological syndrome cerebral malaria induced by Plasmodium falciparum in humans and Plasmodium berghei ANKA in rodents. Mice infected with P. berghei ANKA show marked differences in disease manifestation and either die from experimental cerebral malaria (ECM) or from hemolytic anemia caused by hyperparasitemia (HP). A majority of laboratory mouse strains so far investigated are susceptible to ECM; however, a number of wild-derived inbred strains show resistance. To evaluate the genetic basis of this difference, we crossed a uniquely ECM-resistant, wild-derived inbred strain (WLA) with an ECM susceptible laboratory strain (C57BL͞6J). All of the (WLA ؋ C57BL͞6J) F 1 and 97% of the F2 progeny displayed ECM resistance similar to the WLA strain. To screen for loci contributing to ECM resistance, we analyzed a cohort of mice backcrossed to the C57BL͞6J parental strain. A genome wide screening of this cohort provided significant linkage of ECM resistance to marker loci in two genetic regions on chromosome 1 ( 2 ‫؍‬ 18.98, P ‫؍‬ 1.3 ؋ 10 ؊5 ) and on chromosome 11 ( 2 ‫؍‬ 16.51, P ‫؍‬ 4.8 ؋ 10 ؊5 ), being designated Berr1 and Berr2, respectively. These data provide the first evidence of loci associated with resistance to murine cerebral malaria, which may have important implications for the search for genetic factors controlling cerebral malaria in humans.