title: Parasite immune evasion: a momentous molecular war.
abstract: Current research in immunology shows that parasite evasion of host immunity is ubiquitous and involves a wide range of molecular mechanisms. Furthermore, immune evasion appears to generate a large spectrum of pathogenic effects, such as cytokine storms and inflammation. Understanding the relationships between the beneficial effects of immune evasion and its pathogenic consequences therefore provides a new framework to reassess many of the core questions of the evolutionary ecology of host-parasite interactions, such as the evolution of virulence, immune defence strategies, infective dose and host specificity, and to address questions that thus far could not be satisfactorily analysed.
authors.affiliation: ETH Zürich, Institute of Integrative Biology , Universitätsstrasse 16 CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland. psh@env.ethz.ch
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Schmid-Hempel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D016207:Cytokines / Q000502:physiology; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions / Q000276:immunology*; D007249:Inflammation / Q000276:immunology; D014774:Virulence / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D016207:Cytokines