Abstract
The article by Engwerda et al. [1] about the importance of the spleen in malaria is a welcome contribution to an aspect of malarial immunity that has recently been somewhat neglected. However, the situation is, perhaps, even more complicated than the authors have portrayed. Although it is generally assumed that the spleen is essential for resistance to Plasmodium, this is not always the case. For example, Wyler et al. [2] reported that splenectomy in some host species causes a normally chronic infection to be eliminated, indicating that the spleen might occasionally provide an environment that is favourable to the parasite rather than to the host.
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