G6PD deficiency

Parsiana features G6PD deficiency as a genetic defect among many in the Parsi community. Many people with G6PD deficiency seek counseling and follow restrictions in diet and medications. Testing for this defect is a must. But is G6PD deficiency a curse… or a blessing?

A recent study published in New England Journal of Medicine, April 16, 2008 excerpted from "Current Topics,” Microbe/ Volume 3, Number 6, 2008, reads:

"Rare Host Glycolytic Deficiency Might Protect Against Malaria

"Deficiencies in the enzyme pyruvate kinase (PK), the key rate-limiting step in the glycolic metabolic pathway, might protect some humans against infections by Plasmodiun falciparum, the main parasite responsible for causing malaria, according to Philippe Gros of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and his collaborators. Mitochondria are absent from red blood cells, a major host target for such parasites. Hence, defects in host glycolysis, while problematic to humans carrying traits affecting this metabolic pathway, also could prove detrimental to P. falciparum parasites within those cells and, thus, could partly protect such individuals against malaria, the Canadian researchers say. Meanwhile, for those individuals who are heterozygous, although the parasites are only partly blocked when invading such cells, protective phagocytosis of parasites is enhanced — making this host situation ‘similar to that proposed for hemoglobinopathies… and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency.”

Perhaps researchers in Bombay can throw more light upon this, or pick this up as a new/different angle?

Dr MEHROO M. PATEL

Westchester, Illinois, USA