In our cerebral malaria signature, we see that the immune-cell specific tetraspanin CD53, which is downregulated in cerebral patients, can be a better marker for cerebral disease status, as it also belongs to one of the gene pairs in the K-TSPs analysis, and was shown to be down-regulated during neutrophil activation with TNF (Mollinedo et al., 1998). This evidence concerns the gene TNF and cerebral malaria.