AIM: To further provide scientific evidence for designing safe and effective vaccines of human cerebral malaria. METHODS: Genomic DNA samples of two P. falciparum isolates prepared directly from 5 cases of cerebral malaria patients’blood in Mengla County, Yunnan Province (CMH/YN) and in Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province (CYJ/YN) were used for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and the two pairs of oligonucleotides for the highly conserved genes encoding the regions 12—17 in MAD20 merozoite surface protein 1(MSP1) of Papua New Guinea strain of P. falciparum were used as primers. The PCR products were digested with EcoRI and KpnI, respectively, and the generated fragment regions 16—17 were cloned into M13mp18 and M13mp19 vectors and their DNA were analyzed as the templates for DNA sequencing by the dideoxy chain-termination method. RESULTS: Compared with the three other published-MAD20, K1 and Wellcome sequences, DNA sequences of regions 16—17 in MSP1 from two isolates CMH/YN and CYJ/YN of P. falciparum from Chinese patients with cerebral malaria examined contained identical genes which were composed of 918 bp, encoding 306 amino acid, and containing 12 cysteines, which consisted of 2 epidermal growth factor (EGF) —like domains, respectively, and they were highly homologous up to 98.6% with that of MAD20 strain except that it contained an additional single base deletion at positions 4869 nucleotides and 5 point mutations. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate for the first time that both DNA sequence determined from two isolates CMH/YN and CYJ/YN of P. falciparum from Chinese patients with cerebral malaria belong to the MAD20 allelic dimorphic family, and the deduced amino acids 1691—1 701 have been found to be TCTEEDSGSSR epitopes defined by monoclonal antibodies in P. falciparum.