Early suppression of B cell immune responses by low doses of chloroquine and pyrimethamine: implications for studying immunity in malaria

Malaria remains a significant worldwide public health problem. To address biological questions, researchers rely on the experimental murine model. For decades, chloroquine (CQ) and pyrimethamine (Pyr) have been used to clear Plasmodium infections in experimental animals using standardised accepted protocols and, because of this, drug-treated controls are rarely included. However, there is limited data available on the modulation of anti-malarial immunity, including generation of memory B cells, when these drugs are administered days after malaria infection. We investigated B cell responses to an important malaria glycolipid, glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI), and the hapten nitrophenol (NP), with or without standard CQ and Pyr treatment using the murine model. At day 14, CQ/Pyr treatment significantly suppressed the frequency of NP(+)IgG1(+) memory B cells in NP-KLH-immunised mice. Furthermore, CQ/Pyr-treated NP-KLH-immunised mice did not have significantly higher cellular counts of NP(+) B cells, germinal centre B cells, nor NP(+)IgG1(+) memory B cells than naïve mice (CQ/Pyr treated and untreated). CQ/Pyr-treated GPI-KLH-immunised mice did not have significantly higher cellular counts of GPI(+) B cells than naïve untreated mice. By day 28, this effect appeared to resolve since all immunised mice, whether treated or untreated, had significantly higher B cell proliferative responses than naïve mice (CQ/Pyr treated and untreated) for the majority of B cell phenotypes. The current study emphasises the potential for drug modulation of antigenic B cell responses when using standardised malaria treatment protocols in the experimental murine model. It is recommended that drug-treated controls are included when using experimental malaria infections to address biological questions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00436-019-06335-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.