Parasites infected with malaria can hide inside the bone marrow and evade the body’s defences, research confirms.
The discovery could lead to new drugs or vaccines to block transmission.
The research, published in Science Translational Medicine, fills a “key knowledge gap” in the biology of the disease, say scientists at Harvard.
Carried by mosquitoes, the parasite causes the most severe form of malaria, which leads to more than 500,000 deaths every year globally.