Parasite immune evasion: a momentous molecular war

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.