In summary, P. vivax, which has long been neglected and mistakenly considered 'benign' [12] , is receiving an increasing amount of importance in the debates taking place on malaria epidemiology and control, drug resistance, pathogenesis and vaccines [13] . As reviewed elsewhere, the good clinical characterization of severe disease in vivax infection is the first step to understand how the inflammatory response to this parasite contributes to pathogenesis [14] .