Malaria causes the release of Hb into plasma resulting in the formation of Hb-haptoglobin and heme-hemopexin complexes, internalization into monocytes and macrophages, and induction of HO-1 (Pamplona et al., 2007; Ferreira et al., 2008; Yeo et al., 2009; Cunnington et al., 2012). Here, HMOX1 is linked to malaria.