Malariotherapy and cancer

Abstract

Malariotherapy merits a clinical trial as an adjuvant to conventional cancer therapy. This particular modality of treatment is a most potent stimulus of macrophage activity. These scavenger cells are widely believed to be an essential arm in the host's immune defenses against malignant disease, both as regards the processing of antigens and as killers of tumor cells. Significant too, malariotherapy, as formerly used to effectively treat some 16,000 patients with paretic neurosyphilis in one institution alone, before the advent of the penicillin age, has proved to be a particularly safe modality of treatment.