Given the suggestive evidence of selection pressure in the region surrounding OSBPL11 and the role of OSBP in modulating inflammatory responses20 we investigated whether this might be driven by protection from severe malaria or tuberculosis (TB), but found little evidence that the rs2979356 variant affects risk of severe malaria (β(SE) = −0.0396 (0.032), P=0.21)21 or tuberculosis infection (odds ratio (SE) = 0.993 (0.054), P=0.91)22 in continental Africans. Here, OSBP is linked to malaria.