We hypothesized that the balance of inflammatory to regulatory immune responses would be biased towards a more inflammatory response in children with severe malaria than in children with uncomplicated malaria, that this balance would be restored during convalescence and – crucially – that this would be associated with differences in the proportion, absolute number or function of circulating classical (CD4+ CD127−/lo FOXP3+) regulatory T cells. Here, FOXP3 is linked to malaria.