A field study on blood parasites found that two individual Crimson-backed Tanagers (out of twelve tested) bore Plasmodium, with the study concluding the overall rate was low compared with studies done elsewhere.
In the test tube, Euphorbia hirta has been shown to kill various types of pathogenic bacteria, Helicobacter pylori (albeit weakly), and Plasmodium (potently).
In 1903, together with Alphonse Laveran (1845–1922), he showed that the parasite responsible for the visceral leishmaniasis (or Kala-azar, a fever in India), first described by William Boog Leishman (1865–1926), is a new protozoa, different from Trypanosoma, the agent of the sleeping sickness, and from Plasmodium, the agent of paludism (malaria).
He has particular interest in malaria research and used his knowledge of the genetics and molecular biology of insects to understand how the insect vector copes with the Plasmodium parasite.
At that time it was also known that plasmodia (the causal agents of malaria) were able to change form during their different developmental stages.
Because the feeding process of the Plasmodium parasites damages red blood cells, malaria is sometimes called "parasitic hemolysis" in medical literature.
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In vivo hemolysis can be caused by a large number of medical conditions, including many Gram-positive bacteria (e.g., Streptococcus, Enterococcus, and Staphylococcus), some parasites (e.g., Plasmodium), some autoimmune disorders (e.g., drug-induced hemolytic anemia), some genetic disorders (e.g., Sickle-cell disease or G6PD deficiency), or blood with too low a solute concentration (hypotonic to cells).
Plasmodium | Plasmodium falciparum | Plasmodium species infecting mammals other than primates | Plasmodium lepidoptiformis |
It is known to produce a lectin that has the ability to block the development of Plasmodium, the causal agent of malaria, when it is expressed in genetically modified Anopheles mosquitoes.
Garnham created the subgenus Vinckeia of Plasmodium to accommodate the mammalian parasites other than those infecting primates, i.e. Plasmodium species infecting mammals other than primates.
It is thought that introduced diseases, such as Toxoplasma gondii, avian malaria (Plasmodium relictum), and fowlpox, were probably a significant factor in the species' decline.
From 1989 to 1999, eleven volunteers recruited from the United States Public Health Service, United States Army, and United States Navy were immunized against Plasmodium falciparum by the bites of 1001 to 2927 mosquitos that had been irradiated with 15,000 rads of gamma rays from a Co-60 or Cs-137 source.