{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0245431","title":"A longitudinal study of plasma BAFF levels in mothers and their infants in Uganda, and correlations with subsets of B cells","abstract":"Malaria is a potentially life-threatening disease with approximately half of the world's population at risk. Young children and pregnant women are hit hardest by the disease. B cells and antibodies are part of an adaptive immune response protecting individuals continuously exposed to the parasite. An infection with Plasmodium falciparum can cause dysregulation of B cell homeostasis, while antibodies are known to be key in controlling symptoms and parasitemia. BAFF is an instrumental cytokine for the development and maintenance of B cells. Pregnancy alters the immune status and renders previously clinically immune women at risk of severe malaria, potentially due to altered B cell responses associated with changes in BAFF levels. In this prospective study, we investigated the levels of BAFF in a malaria-endemic area in mothers and their infants from birth up to 9 months. We found that BAFF-levels are significantly higher in infants than in mothers. BAFF is highest in cord blood and then drops rapidly, but remains significantly higher in infants compared to mothers even at 9 months of age. We further correlated BAFF levels to P. falciparum-specific antibody levels and B cell frequencies and found a negative correlation between BAFF and both P. falciparum-specific and total proportions of IgG+ memory B cells, as well as CD27- memory B cells, indicating that exposure to both malaria and other diseases affect the development of B-cell memory and that BAFF plays a part in this. In conclusion, we have provided new information on how natural immunity against malaria is formed.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2021,"id":202069,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9626,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":587864,"name":"Allan Lugaajju","orcid":"0000-0003-4841-0538","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":782124,"name":"Anna Nyman","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":781568,"name":"Ulf Hammar","orcid":"0000-0001-8367-5000","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":607024,"name":"Matteo Bottai","orcid":"0000-0002-3531-2739","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":781569,"name":"Maximilian Julius Lautenbach","orcid":"0000-0001-5763-6964","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":718078,"name":"Christopher Sundling","orcid":"0000-0002-6138-690X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":781570,"name":"Fred Kironde","orcid":"0000-0003-4981-6417","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":781571,"name":"Kristina E. M. Persson","orcid":"0000-0003-2661-3115","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":782123,"name":"Caroline Rönnberg","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":51,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:05.955461Z","pmid":"33465125","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}